One day in August, Phyllie received a phone call she had hoped she would never get. Her 19-year-old brother Daouda had been killed in a Libyan prison while trying to escape. This 43-year-old woman, who lives in France, tells InfoMigrants that she does not know how to mourn her brother without being able to recover his body and give him a proper burial.
A judge in the city of Catania on Italy's island of Sicily has sentenced 11 Nigerian nationals to a total of 136 years in prison for the international trafficking of young women and girls from their home country to Italy, where they enslaved them and forced them to engage in prostitution.
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.
Two Afghan youths have been sentenced to five years in prison each. A juvenile court on Lesbos found them guilty of starting the fire that destroyed the Moria refugee camp in September last year.
Seventy migrants who were reportedly beaten and tortured in six secret prisons in the Libyan city of Bani Walid have been released. The city is considered a hub of human trafficking in Libya.
The British government says it plans to crack down on people bringing migrants across the English Channel. The Prime Minister announced that penalties for smugglers would be "stiffened".
The ringleaders of a human smuggling group have been handed prison terms for their involvement in a plot that led to the deaths of 39 Vietnamese migrants. Their bodies were found in a truck near London in 2019.
A deportation flight from the UK to Jamaica took off in the early hours of Wednesday morning. On board were 13 men of the original 50 destined for the flight. Campaigners continue to protest, saying that the UK's deportation laws "condone child cruelty" by separating parents from children.
An Italian prosecutor's office has upheld jail sentences imposed on six individuals of Italian and Tunisian nationality that ran ''luxury'' trips between Tunisia and Sicily for migrants. The ruse was discovered in a 2017 operation against clandestine migration.
As the COVID-19 outbreak continues, the security minister of Bosnia-Herzegovina suggested that migrants should be deported from the country. He alleged that refugees and migrants posed an economic burden amid the pandemic — as well as a security threat. The mood against migrants in Bosnia is beginning to turn sour.
They come from all over the world and have recently arrived in Europe in search of a better life. On the road to exile, some have found love, others have just missed it. Some say they were able to overcome a daily reality of hunger, beatings and humiliations with the help of their loved one. Others discovered that their relationships exacerbated the pain of leaving home. InfoMigrants met some of them. Here is the story of Jalal, a Somali migrant abducted by traffickers in southern Libya. The 24-year-old spent several months in an underground prison. It was in this hellhole with no daylight that he met Leila, the woman of his life.
A recent report released by the Council of Europe has called on the Danish government to improve the conditions in two of its migrant detention centers.