The Moroccan man had been stopped before at sea in his multiple attempts to cross the Mediterranean from Libya to Europe. But his most recent time was different. The Libyan force that intercepted the boat full of some 50 migrants was more brutal.
The armed men beat and humiliated the migrants, he recalled. They were then taken to a detention facility where for months and weeks they were severely beaten, abused and tortured. He said he was repeatedly beaten with rifle butts and whipped with rubber hoses.
Badges on their uniform showed the affiliation of the gunmen, he said: the Stabilization Support Authority.
The SSA, an umbrella group of militias, has risen to become one of the main forces carrying out Libya’s European Union-aided effort to stop migrants from crossing to European shores. Though migrants have long been brutalized in Libya, rights groups and former detainees say the abuse is taking on a more organized and dangerous nature under this feared new body. And officials say it also is benefiting from EU support.
The SSA has come to rival in strength the official anti-migrant agencies like the coast guard and navy. But unlike them, it reports directly to Libya’s Tripoli-based presidential council and is not subject to EU and U.N. scrutiny intended to prevent rights abuses.
More than a dozen migrants interviewed by the Associated Press told of how they were brutalized by the SSA while being held in its detention facility in the town of Maya on Tripoli’s western outskirts. The migrants, fearing retaliation, spoke on condition of anonymity or that they be identified only by their first names. They were all trying to get out of Libya.
“All I want is to leave this hell,” said Rabei, a 32-year-old Egyptian from a Nile Delta province, describing his feelings before his release earlier this year. He described repeatedly seeing guards beat migrants into unconsciousness, then drag them away. He doesn’t know whether any of them are still alive.
The Stabilization Support Authority did not respond calls and messages from the AP seeking comment. Previously, the group and the Tripoli-based government dismissed allegations of abuses against migrants in statements following a report by the rights group Amnesty International.
Hundreds of thousands of migrants from North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East move through Libya trying to reach Europe. For years, Libyan militias have been notorious for involvement in human trafficking and for detaining migrants, abusing them and extorting money from them.
Most notorious is the SSA’s detention center, set up in a complex that was once a state-run factory in the town of Maya. U.N. agencies and other groups working on migrants have no access to the site, according to spokeswoman for the International Organization for Migration, Safa Msehli.
Up to 1,800 migrants have been held there since its creation, Libya Crimes Watch estimates. Women and children among the detainees are held in a separate part of the prison, the group said.
Libya Crimes Watch and Amnesty International separately documented rampant abuses at Maya prison, including torture, rape, forced labor and forced prostitution, as well as severe overcrowding and lack of food and water.
Ramadan, an Egyptian recently released from Maya, recalled how one young Moroccan was severely beaten after being caught trying to escape. For a week, he was left in the cell, bleeding and his wounds festering as other migrants pleaded with guards to take him to a hospital.
Finally, the guards dragged him away. “He was still alive. We don’t know what happened to him,” Ramadan said.
Torn by civil war since 2011, Libya is divided between rival governments in the east and west, each backed by international patrons and innumerable armed militias on the ground.
In a bid to stem the flow of migrants, the European Union has given the government in Tripoli more than $500 million since 2015. The funds are intended to beef up Libya’s coast guard, reinforce Libya’s southern border and improve conditions for migrants in detention centers run by the Interior Ministry.