From Amnesty International:
Europe’s shameful failure to end the torture and abuse of refugees and migrants in Libya
Farah, a young man from Somalia, his wife and newborn daughter had been at sea for 12 hours when the Libyan coastguard intercepted their dinghy. The couple had fled Libya after enduring several months of torture in a hangar where Farah was beaten and his wife raped in an attempt by Libyan gangs to extract ransom money from their relatives.
When he realized he was being sent back to Libya, the 24-year-old felt sick to his stomach. “I knew it was better to die than to go back, but they threatened us with guns.”
Farah, his wife and baby spent the next seven months in two detention centres in Tripoli. “There was no food or support for my baby. She died when she was eight months old. Her name was Sagal.”
This is just one of several heartbreaking stories of violence and unimaginable cruelty I heard last month in Medenine, a small town in southern Tunisia, which has received a low but steady number of refugees and migrants escaping a hellish life in Libya across the border.
