Libyan authorities rounded up thousands of mostly Egyptian migrants and amassed them at the border, activists said Saturday, as Libya continued its crackdown on migrants.
The migrants were detained in raids over the past two days on trafficking warehouses in the border town of Musaid and other areas in eastern Libya, said Tarik Lamloum, an activist with the Belaady Organization for Human Rights.
Lamloum and another local group, al-Abreen, which helps migrants in Libya, estimated that more than 6,000 migrants have been held at the border. Most of the migrants are Egyptians who were taken to the customs hangar of the Musaid crossing point with Egypt, awaiting their deportation to their home country, they said.
The UNHCR report, seen by the Associated Press, said the crackdown on migrants in Tripoli and other western towns resulted in the detention of 1,800 migrants over the past month. Most of them were transferred to government-run detention centers for migrants or were in the process of moving from other facilities, the UNHCR said.
Such migrant detention centers are rife with abuses, including forced labor, beatings, rapes, and torture—practices that amount to crimes against humanity, according to UN-commissioned investigators.
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