Prisoners accounts of male rape in Libya

International Desk: Libyan prisoners are being systematically raped as a method of torture and humiliation, an investigation has revealed.

Former prisoners have given harrowing accounts of how guards use various objects, including broom handles, to penetrate male inmates while filming the abuse on their mobile phones.

They also reveal that the inmates would be forced to sexually assault one another, and if they refused, they were told they would be killed.

The investigation by a Tunis-based group, reported by French journalist and documentary-maker Cécile Allegra, has been published by several international newspaper, including The Guardian. 

It reveals that the rumours of systematic rape being used as a weapon of war during the 2011 revolution are not only true, but continue in Libya today.

A man named as Ahmed was detained in a prison near Misrata on a wing which held 450 men. 
'They [the guards] take a broom and fix it on the wall. If you want to eat, you have to take off your pants, back on to the broom and not move off until the jailer sees blood flowing. Nobody can escape it,' he reveals. 

'There was a black man, a migrant. In the evening, they threw him into one of our cells: "You rape this guy, otherwise, you're dead!"

Another man imprisoned south of Tripoli said: 'Some of us were locked in a room, naked, for a whole night with groups of migrants. The guards did not release them until they had all raped each other.'

Libya has plunged into chaos since the overthrow of longtime dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, with dozens of armed factions filling the power vacuum. Things are so bad that Libya now has two competing governments. 

In addition to abuse of domestic prisoners, there have been several reports on torture in the many migrant detention centres in Libya. 

Italy and the European Union have been financing, training and providing aid to Libya's coastguard to stop smugglers from taking migrants and refugees in flimsy boats across the Mediterranean to Europe.

Migrants are then sent to detention centres, where many have witnessed of inhumane conditions and abuse.

Last month, the president of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) called for EU aid to stop, saying Libya's detention of migrants 'must be named for what it is: a thriving enterprise of kidnapping, torture and extortion,' detainees told MSF how men are forced to run naked in the courtyard until they collapse from exhaustion, while women are raped and made to call family back home for money to free them.  

Source: Daily Mail Online

 

risingbd/Dhaka/November 3, 2017/A K Azad