Libya still safe haven for Somali refugees

For a group of stranded Somali refugees hoping to reach Europe, even war-torn Libya seems a safe haven compared with their homeland from where they fled Islamist militias.

“I knew Libya was a war zone but I did not think it was more dangerous than Somalia,” said Omar Abdelkarim, a 19-year-old among dozens of refugees transferred to the care of the UN refugee agency on Saturday.

He said he fled Somalia because Al-Shebab, the Islamist militia controlling large parts of Somali, threatened to kill him if he refused to fight in its ranks.

“I am looking for a place where I can study, work and live in peace,” said Abdelkarim, who had a head wound from a bullet that strayed into the compartment where he and fellow refugees took shelter as rebel fighters wrested Tripoli from forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi.

A patrol of those fighters found the 53 Somalis, including five women and one child, on Wednesday in a building in the eastern suburb of Tajura, one of the departure ports for illegal migration to Europe. The majority of them had left Mogadishu with empty pockets, walking or hitch-hiking from Somalia to Sudan via Djibouti and Ethiopia. They completed the journey across the desert to Libya crammed into a smuggler’s truck.

“The journey took 25 days,” said Abdullah Ali Mohammed, adding that the entire trip cost $800 per head, a sum mostly paid off thanks to financial aid received in Khartoum.

Mohammed, 29, is the only one to have taken his wife and daughter along on the arduous journey to Libya, a short boat ride from Europe and, they hope, a better life. Five women braved the journey on their own.

Rebel commander Adnan Ibrahim Mleigta, leader of the Alqaqa unit which found the Somali refugees said he was confident the National Transitional Council, Libya’s interim government, would cooperate with Europe in order to help stem the wave of illegal migration spurred by Col Gaddafi during his pan-African phase.