Libya urged to shut migrant detention centres at U.N. meeting

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By Emma Farge

GENEVA (Reuters) -Libya was urged at a U.N. meeting on Tuesday to close detention centres where rights groups say migrants and refugees have been tortured, abused and sometimes killed.

Multiple states including Britain, Spain, Norway and Sierra Leone raised concerns at the meeting in Geneva about treatment of migrants in Libya, a major transit route for Africans fleeing conflict and poverty towards Europe.

Some of them have been held in warehouses by traffickers where they have been subject to violence and extortion, according to a Dutch court case. 

Norway’s ambassador Tormod Endresen called for protection of vulnerable migrants and an end to arbitrary detentions.

Britain’s rights ambassador Eleanor Sanders echoed that and also sought unrestricted access for U.N. and other groups to mass graves. Some bodies of migrants found in mass graves earlier this year bore gunshot wounds, a U.N. agency said.

In an open letter to Libyan authorities published in parallel to the U.N. review, rights groups called for reforms, saying that armed groups were operating with impunity, obstructing courts and committing widespread abuses.

Libya has had little peace since a 2011 uprising against long-time autocrat Muammar Gaddafi and is between warring eastern and western factions.

Libya’s Eltaher Salem M. Elbaour, acting Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation for the U.N.-backed western government based in the capital Tripoli, said migrants placed a heavy burden on the divided state.

“I’m not here to paint a perfect picture of the human rights situation in my country,” he said.

“Quite the opposite – I have come here to reiterate the large efforts we have made in order to ensure these rights are respected in spite of the challenges that are known to all during this very delicate transitional period.”

He cited as examples his country’s acceptance of the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction in Libya and the creation of a new joint committee to address detention centres.

Libya’s review is part of a process by which governments and rights groups scrutinise all 193 U.N. member states’ records every few years and recommend improvements. The United States snubbed its own review last week in a rare move.

(Reporting by Emma Farge; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)