From Al jazeera:
Italian police say dozens of
Lampedusa boat tragedy victims were raped and tortured in Libya.
Dozens of the people who were on the
boat that sank near the Italian coast last month were raped and tortured in
Libya before starting their journey, Italian police said.
The police revelation on
Friday came after they announced the detention of Mouhamud Elmi Muhidin, a
Somali citizen, who is believed to be the alleged organiser behind the
smugglers' ship packed with migrants that sank off the coast of a southern
Italian island, killing more than 365 migrants.
According to migrants' testimony,
the 20 women in the group were repeatedly raped and offered to Libyan visitors
"as if they were a cup of tea".
Muhidin, Libyan militiamen and
Sudanese traffickers all took part in the alleged assaults in a detention
centre in Sabha in southwest Libya, that Italian prosecutor Maurizio Scalia
likened to "a concentration camp".
"They forced us to watch our
men being tortured with various methods including batons, electric shocks to
the feet. Whoever rebelled was tied up," read the testimony of a
17-year-old Eritrean girl in the investigation, Italian newspaper La Repubblica
daily reported.
The migrants were forced to pay up
to $3500 for their freedom and their onward journey to the Libyan coast and a
boat to Italy.
"The women who could not pay
were assaulted," the girl was quoted as saying in her criminal charge.
She also described in horrific
detail her own sexual assault, saying that Muhidin was one of the three men who
raped her.
"They threw me on the ground,
held down my arms and covered my mouth, and poured gasoline on my head, which
burned my scalp, skin and eyes," she said through a translator. "And
then, not yet happy, the three took turns raping me."
Lynched by his victims
Muhidin, who was identified by
survivors, was attacked and nearly lynched by his victims in the immigrant
centre on Lampedusa when he arrived there on October 25 after making the boat
crossing from Libya himself, setting into motion the police investigation, the
warrant said.
The police said they had not yet
worked out why Muhidin had come to Italy but added that he "may have been
looking for criminal contacts".
"He was one of the leaders of
the trafficking organisation," a police spokeswoman told AFP news agency.
Muhidin faces charges of kidnapping,
sexual assault, people trafficking and criminal association with the goal of
aiding illegal immigration.
If convicted, Muhidin faces a
maximum prison sentence of 30 years.
He was flown to the Sicilian capital
Palermo on Thursday from the southern island of Lampedusa. The Palermo court
announced his arrest on Friday. He has not yet spoken to a lawyer, been
questioned by prosecutors, or entered a plea, investigators said.
Brutal trafficking
Migrants from Eritrea and Somalia
frequently speak of abuses along their journeys to Europe, particularly in an
increasingly lawless Libya following the fall of dictator Moamer Kadhafi.
Their allegations are rarely
investigated, however, and migrant rights groups complain that more
international action should be taken to ease their plight in the countries they
transit through.
Libya is the departure point for two
thirds of the boats that set out for Italy from north Africa. Since the
shipwreck, Italy has stepped up navy patrols and is using drones to search for
boats making the dangerous crossing.
Italian authorities have vowed to
crack down on the people trafficking rings that have been behind the influx of
more than 35,000 asylum-seekers so far this year to the country's coasts.
Most of them come from Eritrea,
Somalia and Syria and Italy has asked for the European Union to step up
assistance in dealing with the arrivals and countering the criminal networks
behind them.
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