A report published by the Migrantes Foundation of the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI) underscored a sharp rise in the detention of migrants in Libyan centers this year. Official centers alone were holding some 10,000 in early October, compared with about 1,100 in January, the report stated.
Police in the Sicilian city of Porto Empedocle have arrested six people who are accused of raping minors. All suspects are Egyptian citizens and five are under 18. The victims were also foreign minors.
A Nigerian couple heading to Europe via Libya was separated and forced to suffer at the hands of ruthless smugglers. Thanks to a safe house supported by the UN and the medical charity MSF, the two were eventually reunited.
A nurse specialized in tropical diseases and working for MSF on Lampedusa said that many migrants who had departed from the Libyan coast claim "to have been beaten and tortured in the centers where they were detained prior to leaving."
The humanitarian organization Intersos denounced in a statement that in Rome, hundreds of migrant adolescents are homeless and at risk for abuse. It said the number of unaccompanied minors in transit in the city has been increasing in recent weeks.
The organization Doctors for Human Rights (MEDU) has denounced the atrocities endured by migrants inside detention centers in Libya, citing the stories recently reported by five migrants in Ragusa, Sicily.
Amnesty said it found new evidence of "harrowing violations, including sexual violence, against men, women and children" living in Libyan detention camps after being returned from the Mediterranean.
Amadi*, a 24-year-old Malian, contacted InfoMigrants to tell us about his experiences in one of Libya's state prisons. Violence against migrants in these detention centers has been well-documented and condemned, yet it continues.
Over 2.5 years after the start of the main trial about the abuse of asylum seekers in a reception center in western Germany, four men were dealt monetary fines. The case from 2014 in the small town of Burbach had triggered widespread outrage and forced regional governments to reassess the standards at such facilities.
The medical charity Doctors without borders (MSF) has announced it will suspend its medical activities in two Libyan detention centers because the levels of violence taking place there are "no longer acceptable."
Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation has confirmed a life sentence for Osman M., known as Ismail, for killing and abusing detainees at the camp of Bani Walid in Libya. The judges said that the man killed at least six people and tortured and raped detainees "beyond any reasonable doubt".
Some 350 African migrants, including over 100 children, have reportedly been freed from a secret prison in southeast Libya. The UN migration agency, IOM, said many of them were malnourished and had been abused.