The Libyan government has appointed as its new director of immigration enforcement a militia leader who once ran one of the country’s most infamous migrant prisons, where rape, beatings and extortion were common. Mohamed al-Khoja was confirmed on December 23 as the next head of the Directorate for Combating Illegal Migration (DCIM), where he will be responsible for overseeing Libya’s approximately 15 migrant detention centers.
Libyan authorities, with the help of funding from the European Union, use these facilities to detain tens of thousands of migrants each year, most captured as they try to cross the Mediterranean on overcrowded ferries. The arrests are the result of EU efforts to stem the flow of migrants from Africa and the Middle East arriving on European shores.
For years, the EU has been sending millions of euros to Libya to train and equip the country’s Coast Guard, which in effect serves as a European outsourced force to stop migrants from crossing the Mediterranean Sea.
At a time when European, African and Middle Eastern human rights advocates, lawmakers and researchers are increasingly calling on the EU to reconsider its involvement in the human rights abuses taking place in Libya, Al-Khoja’s recent appointment is especially noteworthy. For years, he ran the Tariq al-Sikka prison in Tripoli, a place where countless reports have documented crimes against the thousands of migrants held there.
“His appointment exemplifies the pattern of impunity in Libya, which sees individuals suspected of involvement in crimes under international law being appointed to positions of power where they can repeat these violations, rather than facing investigations,” says Hussein Baoumi, a researcher at Amnesty International. . The organization has repeatedly documented human rights violations in Tarik al-Sikka, including arbitrary detention, torture and forced labor during Al-Khoja’s leadership.
Other organizations have reached similar conclusions. In 2019, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime concluded that he had used the migrant detention center as a base to train his militia fighters.
Migrants detained in al-Sikka were used — in clear violation of international law — to clean and store weapons and ammunition, according to a 2019 report by Human Rights Watch. An Associated Press team in 2019 reported that Al-Khoja was behind a multi-million scheme to divert money intended to feed migrants at a UN facility in Tripoli to his militia.
This year, Amnesty International interviewed migrants detained in al-Sikka who said they had been recruited for forced labor such as construction and agricultural work.
Another 2020 Amnesty International report on conditions at the Tariq al-Sikka facility he managed included the account of a migrant who saw two friends die of tuberculosis at the facility for lack of proper care. Migrants detained there were also used to build a shelter for horses belonging to Al-Khoja, according to a report in The Guardian produced last year by Sally Hayden.
“His appointment suggests that the abusive system of detention centers, which is based on violence and extortion, will continue without any hope of reform,” said Wolfram Lacher, a Libya researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin.
The United Nations has already said that “crimes against humanity” are taking place in these detention centers, whose population continues to grow. In 2021, 32,425 people were captured at sea by the Libyan Coast Guard, often with the help of the European Union border agency, which flies drones and surveillance planes over the Mediterranean to locate fleeing refugees.
Once back in Libya, many of these migrants end up arbitrarily detained. Libyan authorities recently stormed two camps of protesting migrants, one of which was opposite the headquarters of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, detaining more than 600 migrants and transferring most of them to a detention center called Ain Zara. , which is part of the centers that Al-Khoja will now oversee.
The International Rescue Committee said it was treating several injured migrants after the attack, including one person who suffered a gunshot wound.
An investigation by The Outlaw Ocean Project, published in Brazil in partnership with leaf, detailed how even European money aimed at making these prisons more humane has supported what has become a gulag of shady, lawless facilities.
The investigation has shown how EU money pays for everything from buses transporting migrants captured at sea from port to prisons to body bags used for those who perish at sea or while in detention.
The EU has long recognized the horrors happening in the migrant prisons that its policies have helped to produce, but it has done little to change those policies or hold perpetrators accountable in Libya. Al-Khoja’s appointment casts further doubt on the EU’s ability or willingness to exercise control over the detention system it helped create. These facilities are full of migrants largely due to the work of the Libyan Coast Guard.
Funded by the EU, it receives considerable help from drones and surveillance planes operated by Frontex, the European border agency that patrols the Mediterranean and reports the coordinates of migrant ferries to Libyan authorities.
DCIM itself is also a direct benefactor of EU funds. In 2019, for example, the agency received 30 Toyota Land Cruisers specially modified to intercept migrants in the desert of southern Libya. EU money also bought 10 buses for DCIM to send captured migrants to prisons.
Mark Micallef, Libya expert at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, said it would be unwise or unethical to withdraw EU money from the many aid organizations that work with migrants in Libyan detention centres. He adds that EU officials may not have much control over what happens in Libyan migrant prisons, but they could put pressure on the Libyan government by tying financial support to the Coast Guard to substantiated improvements to these prisons.
However, the EU appears to be moving in the opposite direction. In early December, the bloc sent state-of-the-art computer and radio terminals to Libya to equip a command center responsible for intercepting migrants in the Mediterranean. In December, it also committed a further €1.2 million (R$7.5 million) in aid for spare parts for two high-speed boats used by the Libyan Coast Guard.
In mid-December, French President Emmanuel Macron called for Frontex to be granted emergency powers, arguing that Europe’s future depends on its ability to control its borders. His comments came two days after more than two dozen migrants drowned during an attempt to cross the English Channel.
One of the most difficult problems in Libya is that the central government exercises only nominal control over militias, according to a 2020 report by the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime. “Government officials are forced to formalize ad hoc power agreements based on any armed group that has a martial advantage in a given area,” the report says.
“This effectively creates the way for individuals involved in armed organized crime, such as Al-Khoja and others, to become part of the official state apparatus, whether military, intelligence or government.”
Federico Soda, a high-ranking official in Libya at the UN International Organization for Migration, who has used millions in EU funds for medical and other assistance for migrants detained in Libya, said he would wait to see if Al-Khoja’s appointment would last before comment. Asked about the matter, EU spokesman Peter Stano said he was unsure of the appointment and, citing the holiday season, said he would not comment until “normal working life returns”.
Formerly under the direction of Mabrouk Abd Al-Hafiz, the DCIM had in recent years closed down the most troubled migrant prisons, only to see them reopen or others spring up in their place. Aid organizations, as well as some Libyan officials, have admitted that the agency does not have full control of the prisons, which are almost all run by one or another of the country’s militias.
In interviews, Al-Hafiz said corruption exists both among the militias that run the prisons and in the Libyan Coast Guard. Al-Khoja served as al-Hafiz’s deputy for several years, although there were reports that the latter had unsuccessfully tried to expel him from his position in the DCIM.
Despite Al-Khoja’s appointment and the negative reaction to it among researchers and human rights advocates, Libyan Foreign Minister Najla Mangoush has redirected attention to Europe.
According to her, Libya is tired of doing Europe’s will in the control of migration, but she also denies the idea that her country has been guilty of mistreating immigrants in its custody. “Please don’t point the finger at Libya,” she said, “and portray us as a country that abuses and disrespects refugees.”
understand the series
This text is part of a series produced by The Outlaw Ocean Project, whose director is Ian Urbina, in partnership with leaf. The special examines the EU’s collaboration with Libya in detaining migrants trying to reach Europe. The Outlaw Ocean Project, a Washington-based non-profit journalistic organization, focuses on environmental and human rights issues that occur on the high seas.
.
