New Yorker article sheds light on inhumane conditions that migrants face in Libyan prisons

A recent article published in the New Yorker sheds light on the inhumane conditions that migrants from Africa are facing in Libyan prisons.

“In the past six years, the European Union, weary of the financial and political costs of receiving migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, has created a shadow immigration system that stops them before they reach Europe,” writes Ian Urbina.

International aid agencies have documented an array of abuses,Urbina reports, including detainees tortured with electric shocks, families extorted for ransom and men and women sold into forced labor.

“The E.U. did something they carefully considered and planned for many years,” Salah Marghani, Libya’s Minister of Justice from 2012 to 2014, told Urbina. “Create a hellhole in Libya, with the idea of deterring people from heading to Europe.”