File photo. Migrants in a detention centre before being voluntarily returned to their countries of origin. Tripoli, 29 August.
Aisha fled her home country after five miscarriages: for her in-laws and the neighbourhood, she was either sterile or a witch. She contacted a former classmate who appeared to have made a life for herself in neighbouring Libya and who lent Aisha money to join her. As soon as I arrived, I was locked up, I was a slave.
She brought men to me and she got the money. Some migrants said they had been advised to take a three-month contraception jab before departure, and some travel with morning-after pills, according to UN reports. But she ended up spending most of her year there in prison, where she was sexually exploited, before fleeing to Tunisia in Mariam said she had fallen into the hands of militiamen who run illegal migrant camps where extortion, rape and forced labour are common.
Official centres under Libyan government control, and where the European Union-funded coastguard transfers would-be exiles it intercepts, are also riddled with corruption and violence, including sexual assault, according to the United Nations.
Three migrant detention centres in Libya were closed in mid and the establishment in March of a new UN-sponsored transitional government has raised hope of a decline in impunity and violence. But they have yet to even be recruited, and intercepted migrants are still turned back to Libya, to the dismay of international organisations. EU aid to Libya to stop migrants entering Europe is fuelling a Libyan detention network that thrives on kidnapping, torture and extortion, a leading medical charity charged yesterday 7 September.
