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Following the April 11 release of Bija, an alleged Libyan trafficker who has been accused of crimes against humanity by the UN, several migrants told InfoMigrants about their experiences at the hands of this feared boss of the Libyan coast guard in Zaouia.

"A monster." "(C)apable of shooting a human being as he would shoot an animal."

Three days after the release of alleged migrant trafficker Abd al-Rahman Milad, better known by his alias Bija, "for lack of evidence", those who had dealings with him draw a chilling picture.

"In Libya, there is not one migrant who does not know Bija," says Mamadou, who fled Libya to return to his home country, Guinea. "He is worse than the devil," he says.

"Even the Libyans don't dare contradict him because he is known to be very violent with them too," comments Ali, another Guinean who spent three months in Zaouia prison, run by Bija and his cousin Osama, also a notorious torturer.

Also read: Libya: Alleged migrant trafficker Al-Milad freed

30-year-old Bija has been described as one of the worlds most wanted human traffickers, who was placed under sanctions by the UN security council for being directly involved in the sinking of migrant boats.

He was released from a Libyan prison on April 11, six months after being incarcerated for human trafficking in a judicial decision that has left several international organizations stunned.

Abdullah, a Sudanese migrant, remembers the day the boat he was on was intercepted at sea and he was taken back to Tripoli. During the whole journey, he says he was beaten by "Bija's men". "In Tripoli, we were insulted and punched, then Bija's men fired shots over our heads. Bija was present. He took pleasure in seeing the terror in our eyes."

The strongman of Zaouia -- who, according to the Italian press, double jobs as both coast guards and human smugglers -- has ensured that he has been personally present during interceptions of migrant boats at sea in recent years. These arrests are often a living nightmare for those who are then sent back to the country they want to flee at all costs and are then imprisoned there.

"In 2018, I was on board a boat heading to Europe and the Libyan coast guard chased us," says Jamal, also from Sudan. Bija was behind the wheel of the coast guard boat. "They started circling our boat, we almost fell into the water, and all of a sudden they started shooting at us," he continues. "Many were injured and fell into the sea. It was awful."

Also read: Libya detains coastguard commander accused of human trafficking and migrant smuggling

Several migrants, however, confide that, as cruel as he is, Bija is just another trafficker in Libya. This means that he is just as bad as all the rest of them. "He is like the others, savage," says Mamadou.

The release of Bija did not come as a surprise for Omar, a Syrian migrant who has become bitter after years in Libya. For him, this release only attests, once again, to the "power of the militias" in this country given over to the law of the strongest.

"The militias are able to control the decisions of justice," Omar said, protesting against the impunity enjoyed by those who torture, for example, migrants in the town of Bani Walid, located a hundred kilometers south of Tripoli, in full view of everyone.

In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Bija attacked the Libyan and international press: "When I was arrested last October, the press wrote fake news about me I know that the arrest was ordered by some politicians who forgot that Abd al-Rahman Milad had protected for years the coasts of our homeland."

Bija was reportedly released in exchange for his militia's help in an operation to liberate the capital Tripoli. While still in prison, the former UN-supported government in Tripoli in March actually promoted Bija for his participation in the fighting to repel an attack on the capital by eastern Libya forces.

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'Worse than the devil': Migrants react to the release of alleged human trafficker Bija - InfoMigrants

By Sami Zaptia.

London, 15 April 2021:

The U.S. Embassy in Libya underscored in a statement yesterday the need for a unified Libya with control over its borders.

The statement came after the U.S. embassy in Chad issued a security alert on the back of media reports indicating movement of armed non-governmental groups into Chad from Libya and possible confrontations with the Chadian Army.

The media reports describe the area in northern Chad near the borders of Niger and Libya, particularly Wour and Zouarke.

The armed non-governmental groups was FACT (Front for Change and Concord inChad/ Front pour lalternance et la concorde au Tchad).

The U.S. Embassy in Libya said FACT insurgents recent entry to Chad from Libya again highlight the urgent need for a unified, stable Libya with control over its borders.

It added We will continue to engage Libyan and international stakeholders to support the political process culminating in December elections that will help consolidate a sovereign and secure Libya free from foreign interference in the interest of regional stability and the security of Libyas neighbours.

See original here:
After Chadian insurgents move from Libya to Chad, US embassy reiterates the need for a Libya free from foreign interference and in control of its...

CAIRO (AP) Forces in western Libya on Wednesday released more than 100 prisoners who had been captured while fighting under the banner of the country's eastern-based commander, in a gesture of reconciliation following recent accords, officials said.

The fighters, troops of commander Khalifa Hifter, were freed in the coastal town of Zawiya in a televised ceremony attended by senior officials from the newly appointed transitional government.

Mohammad Younes Menfi, head of the presidential council, called the move a significant step toward a national reconciliation initiative launched by the council, after bitter years of fighting between rival governments in East and West.

Those released were seen wearing traditional white uniforms and caps at the ceremony in a soccer stadium, before rejoining their families.

Musa al-Koni, deputy head of the presidential council, called for the release of all of Libya's war prisoners.

Hifters forces launched an offensive in April 2019 to try and capture Tripoli, but the campaign collapsed last June.

The warring sides reached a cease-fire deal in October that virtually ended the war and paved the road for U.N.-led political talks. Those talks then led to the appointment of an interim government in February, ahead of elections later this year.

Oil-rich Libya plunged into chaos after a 2011 NATO-backed uprising toppled and killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi. The country for years has been divided between two governments, one in the east and another in the west, each backed by a vast array of militias as well as foreign powers.

Read the original here:
Libya officials say over 100 eastern war prisoners released

The family of a British-based photographer killed in 2011 by pro-Gaddafi forces during the Arab spring have launched a campaign to pressure Libya to investigate his death.

Anton Hammerl, 41, was shot after being targeted as part of a small group of journalists, including the US reporter James Foley who himself was subsequently kidnapped and murdered by Islamic State in Syria.

Left for dead in the desert after Foley and fellow journalists Clare Morgana Gillis and Manu Brabo were captured, Hammerls body has never been recovered.

The case was briefly investigated as a war crime by the international criminal court, but it was dropped after the death of Muammar Gaddafi and the fall of his regime.

The lack of a body has meant no inquest into Hammerls death has taken place in the UK, where the father of two, a joint South African-Austrian citizen, lived with his family.

After years of chaos and conflict in Libya, the family hope the new interim government will be able to help them locate his body.

The family are being represented by Caoilfhionn Gallagher QC, who has been heavily involved in the push to secure justice for the murdered Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, and they are also being supported by Foleys mother, Diane.

With the 10th anniversary of his killing on Monday, the family plan to take the case to the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and the UN working group on forced disappearances.

On the face of it we believe there is reasonable evidence to believe that Antons death was a war crime, said Gallagher, who added that research into Hammerls death that James Foley had been working on at the time of his own murder had been supplied to the campaign.

This wasnt journalists just caught in a crossfire. They were identifiable as civilians and journalists when they were targeted and Anton was killed during an enforced abduction. She added that in the intervening period the international community has treated his death with a shrug of the shoulders.

Hammerl was among a number of journalists killed during the chaos of the Arab spring and its long aftermath not least in Syria including Marie Colvin of the Sunday Times, the Sky News cameraman Mick Deane, Foley himself, and the photojournalists Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington.

Hammerl had been covering the conflict between pro-regime and anti-Gaddafi forces when the group he was with came under fire from Libyan soldiers in a remote desert location near Brega on 5 April 2011.

Initially the family were led to believe by Libyan officials that all four journalists had been captured, and it was only six and a half weeks later when the survivors were released that it was revealed Hammerl had been killed and his body left in the desert.

Since his death, there has been sporadic and vague information about the location of his body, with a suggestion in 2012 that a body matching his description had been found in a mass grave of 170 people and DNA samples had been taken but never delivered for processing.

His wife, Penny Sukhraj-Hammerl, who had just given birth to the couples second child when Hammerl was killed, hopes the new government in Libya will finally take action to help find Hammerls body and explain his death.

Its been hard, a very hard 10 years for the family but its our hope after all these years there might be a different flavour in the air, a different calibre of leadership that may consider things in a different way.

So were hopeful. They have things at their disposal they should have been able to use if they would consider what weve been through. Because weve not even had a body. To think you knew someone who you had heard their voice the day before, and suddenly theyve vanished. Theres always a real hole.

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Family of photographer urge Libya to investigate his death - The Guardian

Five people have died and more than 500 have been returned to Libya in separate incidents in the central Mediterranean in the space of two days.

In the latest shipwreck in the Mediterranean Sea involving migrants headed to Europe, two women and three children reportedly drowned when a boat carrying dozens of people capsized off the Libyan coast, a UN official told the Associated Press (AP) news agency on Wednesday (March 31).

Safa Msehli, spokesperson for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), said the incident took place late Tuesday. A fishing boat and Libya's coast guard managed to rescue around 77 migrants and returned them to Libya, she said.

According to IOM's Msehli, "a total of 400 migrants were intercepted and returned to Libya late Tuesday and taken to detention centers," AP reported. Over the weekend, Libya's coast guard had already intercepted nearly 1,000 migrants and brought them back to Libya.

Tuesday's deadly shipwreck was the latest along the central Mediterranean migration route. According to the IOM, 232 migrants died in the central Mediterranean between January 1 and April 1 this year, up from 137 in the same period in 2020.

A day later, on Wednesday (March 31), Libya's coast guard intercepted an inflatable boat carrying 138 Europe-bound migrants off the country's northwestern coast, the country's navy said. More than half of the migrants were from Sudan, while the rest were from other African countries, the navy added.

According to the AFP news agency, among the group were nine women and three children. The whole group was taken to a naval base in the capital Tripoli on Libya's northwestern coast.

Over the past decade, Libya has become a main transit point for migrants fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East. The oil-rich country of some seven million people plunged into chaos following a NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed longtime ruler Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.

People smugglers have thrived in the subsequent lawlessness, often packing desperate families into overcrowded and unsafe rubber boats that capsize along the dangerous sea route across the central Mediterranean to Europe. Over the last several years, hundreds of thousands of migrants have reached Europe either on their own or after being rescued at sea.

Despite the dangers -- more than 17,000 people have drowned along the way in the central Mediterranean since 2014 --, the number of migrants risking the Mediterranean crossing to Europe has been rising lately: 6,669 people reached Italian shores by boat since the beginning of the year, 2.5 times as many as in the same period last year, according to Italian interior ministry data. More than half of all arrivals said their country of origin was Ivory Coast, Tunisia, Guinea, Bangladesh or Sudan.

Others are intercepted and forcibly returned by the country's coast guard, whereupon they are often left at the mercy of armed groups or confined in squalid detention centers without adequate food and water, rights groups say.

An AP investigation in 2019 found that "militias in Libya tortured, extorted and otherwise abused migrants for ransoms in detention centers under the nose of the UN, often in compounds that receive millions in European money, paid to Libya's government to slow the tide of migrants crossing the Mediterranean."

Over the past years, the European Union has partnered with Libya to prevent migrants from making the journey by sea to Europe. Among other things, it has been training and funding Libya's controversial coast guard, despite a record of abuses, to prevent migrants from reaching European soil.

Meanwhile, distress hotline Alarm Phone reported early Wednesday morning that around 80 people in distress on a rubber off Malta boat contacted them. At the time of publication early Wednesday afternoon, no rescue had been confirmed.

With AFP, AP

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Mediterranean: Five migrants dead, hundreds returned to Libya - InfoMigrants