Amnesty International is calling on the EU and Italy to stop supporting Libyan detention centres, claiming they are the scene of widespread torture and abuse.
The international human rights agency released preliminary findings from its April 2014 investigation in the country, which included interviews with 138 detainees, almost 100 of whom reported torture, severe whippings, beatings and receiving electric shocks.
Human Rights Watch visited nine of the 19 migrant detention centres run by the Interior Ministry’s Department for Combating Illegal Migration (DCIM).
In eight of the centres, 93 detainees, including a number of boys as young as 14, described how guards regularly assaulted them and other detainees.
Beyond the explicit violence, Human Rights Watch reported on massive overcrowding, dire sanitation conditions and lack of access to adequate medical care in eight of the nine centres it visited.
Boys as young as 14 described being assaulted
Both the EU and Italy have committed at least €12 million over the next four years to help rehabilitate some of Libya’s detention centres and fund international and Libyan non-governmental organisations providing assistance there.
But Amnesty said assistance to all centres operated by the Interior Ministry should be discontinued until it agreed to investigate the abuses and the UN Support Mission in Libya and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees had independently verified that the abuses did in fact stop.
The reports on abuse come as the number of migrants and asylum seekers making the dangerous sea crossing to the EU from Libya is set to reach record levels in 2014.
The Italian navy has been running a large-scale rescue operation, known as Mare Nostrum, since October 2013, rescuing thousands of asylum seekers and migrants from unseaworthy boats.
On June 17, Italian Defence Minister Roberta Pinotti said his country would ask the EU’s border agency, Frontex, at this week’s summit, to take over the operation.
The Maltese government is to support Italy, which is said to be prepared to threaten the suspension of Mare Nostrum should Frontex fail to step in.