Libyan court jails four human traffickers for up to 22 years
TRIPOLI – Libya’s Tripoli Criminal Court on Tuesday sentenced four members of “a criminal gang” convicted of human trafficking, abductions for ransom and torture to between 12 and 22 years in jail, the attorney general’s office said.
The four defendants were not identified by name. One of the defendants was sentenced in absentia.
Libya has become a transit route for migrants fleeing conflict and poverty to Europe via dangerous routes across the desert and over the Mediterranean since the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi in a NATO-backed uprising in 2011.
Charges against the four defendants including smuggling illegal migrants from Zuwara, a coastal city west of Tripoli, the attorney general’s office said.
The gang also kidnapped migrants, forcing their families to pay ransom by sending them “videos documenting the victims’ torture”, it added.
At least 17 bodies believed to be migrants were recovered by a medical service centre two weeks ago from the shores of Zuwara.
On Monday, the Public Prosecutor’s Office ordered the arrest of “a criminal gang” that sent migrants from the eastern Libyan city of Tobruk to the northern Mediterranean on a dilapidated and unsafe boat that capsized and resulted in the death of 38 Sudanese, Egyptian, and Ethiopian nationals.
In November, several states including Britain, Spain, Norway and Sierra Leone urged Libya at a U.N. meeting in Geneva to close detention centres where rights groups say migrants and refugees have been tortured, abused and sometimes killed. — Agencies
