Tortured in Tripoli, beaten in Benghazi

On Thursday, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi publicly ruled out any inquiry into the Armed Forces’ claim that 27 migrants, all Somalis, had ‘voluntarily’ accepted to be returned to Libya last weekend.

Gonzi was quoted as saying: “The army behaved according to established rules and procedures and if this weren't the case, I would have taken action but from what I have been told by the army they observed all procedures and protocol."

But it is very far from clear what ‘procedures and protocol’ the PM had in mind. Seeing as the migrants were intercepted in Malta’s Search and Rescue zone, the operations should technically have been co-ordinated by the Maltese Rescue Co-ordination Centre (RCC) at the Luqa barracks.

Responsibility for the fate of the 27 returned migrants therefore rests entirely with Malta, and not Italy. This is particularly significant, because the two countries are answerable to different ‘procedures and protocol’ governing both irregular immigration and rescue at sea.

Treaty with Libya
As of August 2008, Italy has been signatory to a highly questionable ‘Treaty of Friendship, Partnership and Co-operation’ with Libya, which permits the forced deportation (illegal, according to international law) of asylum seekers without giving them opportunity to apply for refugee status.

Malta, however, is party to no such agreement. Instead, we are obliged by the SAR convention to transfer rescued persons to the ‘nearest safe port of call’, while the Dublin II convention obliges Malta to ascertain whether there are any applications for asylum, and to process those applications accordingly.

It is amply clear from the sequence of events last weekend that neither of these two conditions was met in the case of the 27 returned migrants returned to Libya: which at the time was not the ‘nearest’ port of call, and certainly not the safest. Moreover, it is unclear how the Prime Minister could rule out the need for an inquiry, when by his own admission he only sought the version of one side: that of the AFM.

Certainly, he did not talk to the migrants who were brought to Malta, some of whom told this newspaper that the others – who had been picked up by the Italian Guardia di Finanza – were under the impression they were to be taken to Italy.

Nor did Gonzi speak to Laura Boldrini, director of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, who said that “not once have I met one single migrant that expressed his wish to be returned to Libya”, and that Malta's version of events is “simply doesn’t make any logical sense.”

And it is evident that he did not seek a second opinion from Amnesty International, one of the few human rights watchdogs outside the UNHCR to have gathered intelligence on the ground in Libya. Perhaps this is just as well, for the AI report entitled Libya of Tomorrow: What Hope for Human Rights (published 23 June) makes for very grim and disturbingreading.

This is how the report describes the daily life of an irregular migrant living in Libya today: “They live in constant fear: fear of being arrested and held indefinitely in overcrowded detention centres; fear of being exploited, beaten and abused; and fear of being forcibly returned to an uncertain future, where they may face persecution or torture.”

Incidentally, these are the lucky ones who were not arrested cooped up in any of the country’s estimated 16 detention centres. For the others, matters are considerably worse.

Conditions of detention
Libya has never signed the 1951 Geneva Convention, and according to the AI report “there are no procedures in place for asylum-seekers to apply to be recognized as refugees by the Libyan authorities.”

Refugee status is de facto not recognized at all, and there are even reports of UNHCR refugee documents being confiscated at checkpoints by the Libyan police. UNHCR itself was expelled from Libya last month, which also means that there is currently no reliable way of ascertaining facts on the ground… still less monitoring the plight of the 27 Somalis sent there last Saturday with the collusion of Maltese authorities.

“Irregular migration is treated like any other crime,” the AI report notes. “People are arrested, tried and jailed. However, in practice, individuals suspected of being irregular migrants almost never face formal charges or trial for breaching (immigration laws). Instead they find themselves arrested and placed in detention centres with no opportunity to challenge the lawfulness of their detention.”

What usually happens is that virtually all migrants, regardless of status or eligibility to protection at law, are arbitrarily detained without trial –in itself a crime against humanity.

Apart from ‘unofficial’ detention centres, there are 10 formal centres catering specifically for irregular migrants: these are Az-Zawiya, Djawazat, Ganfouda, Garabule, Gatroun, Misratah, Surman, Tweisha, Zlitan and Kufra. According to AI, none meets the basic minimum international standards for detention.

“Centres are over-crowded and unhygienic and access to medical care is limited or non-existent. In some cases, detainees are denied regular access to the yard and spend days or weeks trapped inside their cells. In other cases, supplies of food and drinking water are sporadic or severely limited.”

Conditions vary from centre to centre, with Misratah enjoying a reputation as among the better facilities: “Eritrean national Kibreab, who had been detained both in Zlitan and Misratah, said that the conditions in the two centres were barely comparable. In Zlitan, he was kept in a cell with over 60 other people and never allowed to go outside. On the other hand, he acknowledged that he received medical treatment in Misratah, and that he was transferred to the hospital and then released on health grounds.”

At Garabule, “detainees complained that there were about 40 to 50 people in a small cell with only one toilet. While there was running water in the cells, it was reportedly frequently turned off either completely arbitrarily or as punishment for making too much noise, asking for medical care or banging on the cell door to get the attention of the guards. Detainees were rarely allowed to go outside into the yard, on average once a week depending on the goodwill of the guards.”

Torture and degrading treatment
In addition to being subjected to indefinite detention in difficult conditions, individuals believed to be irregular migrants face regular verbal abuse, beatings and other ill-treatment, in some cases amounting to torture, while in Libyan custody.

“Those carrying out the abuses include police officers and detention centre guards,” the report states. “Victims include prisoners under sentence of death, refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants.

“In recent years, the most frequently reported methods have been: beatings; beatings on the soles of the feet (falaqa); the use of electric shocks; being suspended by the arms; and the deliberate denial of medical treatment.”

Yonas, an Eritrean national who spoke to AI, was arrested and detained at the Djawazat Detention Facility. “Not only did he have to share his cell with about 50 other foreign nationals and sleep on a piece of cardboard with only a sheet for cover, but Yonas also said that he was beaten by the guards. He said that one particularly brutal beating left him deaf in one ear…”

Another Eritrean national, Seghen, was held in a detention centre in Ajdebia for about two months in 2008. He said that “guards beat him and other detainees in the centre all the time for no particular reason and always called them ‘animals’ in Arabic.”

Elsewhere, Eritrean nationals were reportedly intimidated and forced through violence to sign forms connected with visits to the centres by Eritrean embassy officials. Eritreans held in Garubule were “reportedly beaten with sticks and electric wires by Libyan detention centre guards for refusing to complete the forms on 11 January 2010. Reports suggest that a number of detainees were handcuffed and beaten particularly severely in order to intimidate the others into completing the forms and having their pictures taken.”

Excessive force
On 9 August 2009, more than 100 detainees, mainly Somali, staged an escape attempt at the Ganfouda Detention Centre near Benghazi. According to the Amnesty International, “when guards at the detention centre sought to prevent the escape, they employed excessive force, using live ammunition, knives and sticks against the detainees.”

Most of the detainees were recaptured after reinforcements arrived from outside the camp. A number of detainees were reportedly killed, and many others injured.

“Following the escape attempt, most of the detainees, including some who had not participated in the escape attempt, were reported to have been assaulted by security forces within the detention centre to punish them and to deter them from any further such attempts. Further, it was reported that detention centre guards denied medical assistance to those who sustained injuries and required urgent medical treatment.”

Outside detention, the life of a Subsaharan African in Libya is described as one of “constant risk”. A volunteer at the International Organization for Migration (IOM) Voluntary Return Centre in Tripoli talks of systematic abuse of foreigners by gangs of locals “who act with impunity, well aware that foreign nationals believed to be irregular migrants would not dare complaining to the police.”

Seghen complained that “even the simplest task such as buying bread was dangerous”, as he was often threatened by groups of Libyans who at times have robbed and assaulted him. He said: “we [foreigners] are living in constant fear because every minute something terrible might happen to us in this country.”

Abdallah, a Sudanese national, recounted witnessing a knife attack by Libyan adolescents on another Sudanese man. He accompanied the victim to a police station, but said that “the police, instead of opening an investigation into the attack, beat them both and put them in detention for four days and threatened to send them to Kufra for deportation.”

Sometimes, Libyan police are active participants in the abuse: “Adama, a national of Burkina Faso… said that threats, intimidation and insults by police were routine. He said that there were frequent police raids on neighbourhoods in Tripoli where foreign nationals are known to reside. He claimed that police once came to the house where he lived and destroyed his belongings. He also complained that he had been beaten on the head by police with batons…”

Forced repatriations
But for many Subsaharan Africans – especially Eritreans and Somalis – the most feared possibility remains deportation, which often translates into a virtual death sentence.

While not signatory to the Geneva Convention, Libya is part of the Organisation of African Unity Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa (OAU Refugee Convention), which places obligations not to return any individuals to a country where their “life, physical integrity or liberty would be threatened” (OAU, Article 2).

Nonetheless, in 2006 alone Libya deported 64,430 foreign nationals, without offering the possibility of humanitarian protection. Amnesty International denounces Libya’s blanket deportation policy as not transparent, inhumane and ultimately illegal: “Those suspected of having entered or stayed in the country irregularly are deported, at times collectively, without access to a lawyer or translation facilities, without an assessment of their individual cases and without the opportunity to appeal against the decision to deport them. Many are migrants, but Libyan authorities appear to make little attempt to differentiate between migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers.”

This, then, is the situation to which 27 Somalis were “voluntarily” returned last week, under circumstances which Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi believes do not warrant an inquiry.

Small wonder agencies such as the UNHCR and Amnesty International find our version of events difficult to believe.

This article appeared in MaltaToday on Sunday