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Over 100 migrants, including five women, have been rescued after a gang held them for ransom in eastern Libya. The country’s attorney general announced on Monday.
“A criminal group involved in organising the smuggling of migrants, depriving them of their freedom, trafficking them, and torturing them to force their families to pay ransoms for their release,” a statement from the attorney general said.
Libya has become a major transit point for migrants from Africa and the Middle East attempting to reach Europe, a trend that escalated after Muammar Gaddafi’s overthrow in 2011. Many migrants, desperate for passage, have fallen victim to traffickers.
Recently, over 100 migrants were freed from a gang in Ajdabiya, about 160 kilometres from Benghazi. According to officials, five suspected traffickers from Libya, Sudan, and Egypt have been arrested.
Photos found on the suspects’ phones and shared by the attorney general and Ajdabiya security directorate showed the migrants with cuffed hands and legs, bearing signs of beatings. These findings align with previous discoveries of mass graves in Libya, including a February find of 28 bodies in the desert near Kufra and another 19 in the Jikharra area. Officials blamed known smuggling networks for these deaths.
As of December 2024, the UN reported that around 825,000 migrants from 47 countries were in Libya. The migration crisis was a key topic in a recent meeting between the EU migration commissioner, ministers from Italy, Malta, and Greece, and Libya’s prime minister, Abdulhamid Dbeibah.
