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Among those detained in the raid in Gargaresh town were hundreds of women and children.
According to officials, a massive crackdown in western Libya resulted in the detention of 4,000 immigrants, including hundreds of women and children.
The raid took place on Friday in the western town of Gargaresh as part of a security campaign described by the authorities against undocumented immigrants and drug trafficking. The Ministry of the Interior, which led the crackdown, did not mention the arrest of any traffickers or smugglers.
Officials said on Friday that 500 undocumented immigrants had been detained, but reports on Saturday said that number had reached 4,000.
Gargaresh is a well-known immigration and refugee center, located about 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) west of Tripoli, the capital of Libya. Over the years, there have been several waves of attacks on immigrants in the town, but the most recent was described by activists as the most violent to date.
“We heard that more than 500 immigrants, including women and children, have been rounded up, arbitrarily detained and are at risk of abuse and abuse,” Daxrock, director of the Norwegian Refugee Council for Libya, said in a statement on Friday.
“Libyan immigrants and refugees, especially those who do not have legal residency rights in the country, are often at risk of being detained arbitrarily. Torture, sexual violence and extortion [are] It is rampant in Libyan detention centers,” the statement added.
Photos released by the Ministry of the Interior show dozens of immigrants sitting behind their backs with their hands handcuffed or taken away.
Shockingly, more than 500 immigrants, including women and children, were rounded up today and detained arbitrarily in Libya. https://t.co/Y3XEiji2dA
— Dax Roque (@dax_roque) October 1, 2021
The head of the facility, police colonel Nouri al-Grettli, said that the prisoners were gathered in a facility called the “collection and return center” in Tripoli. He said the migrants have been assigned to detention centers in Tripoli and surrounding towns.
A government official said that the authorities would “repatriate as many migrants as possible”. He said that many detainees had been in Libya for many years without a document. The official requested anonymity because he did not have the right to report the situation to the media.
Chaos in oil-rich countries
Since the 2011 NATO-backed uprising led to the resignation and killing of long-time leader Gaddafi, Libya has become a major transit point for people fleeing wars and poverty in Africa and the Middle East and hoping to live a better life in Europe.
Human traffickers benefited from the chaos in this oil-rich country. They smuggled people through the country’s long border with six countries, then loaded them into poorly equipped rubber boats and ventured on dangerous routes in the central Mediterranean.
Tarik Lamloum, a Libyan activist working with Berardi Human Rights Group, said the raids involved violations of the human rights of migrants, especially the way some women and children were detained. He did not elaborate.
He said that many detainees have been registered as refugees or asylum seekers with the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). UNHCR did not immediately comment.
Thousands of refugees and immigrants are held in official detention facilities, some of them are controlled by armed groups, and an unknown number are held in dirty centers run by traffickers.
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