Migrant smugglers are using far safer vessels or towing rickety clandestine boats behind larger fishing trawlers in a bid to get closer to mainland Europe and Malta, according to a new report into human trafficking.

Conducted between May and December last year, the report, ‘The human conveyor belt broken – assessing the collapse of the human-smuggling industry in Libya and the central Sahel’, was launched by the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime.

Written by former Times of Malta news editor Mark Micallef, the report maps out the people involved, their networks and the flow of smuggling profits.

It notes that as European search-and-rescue missions withdrew from the Libyan coast, the region saw a notable shift among smugglers back to methods seen before the Libyan Revolution.

“There has been a relative shift towards the use of more seaworthy vessels that are better prepared or to resorting to other tactics, such as towing migrants behind fishing vessels,” the report says.

The lack of search-and-rescue capacity along the North African coast could also be linked to an increase in the mortality rate for the central Mediterranean crossing, the study continues. 

Departures from the Libyan coast continued falling throughout 2018 despite a small seasonal increase over the summer. 

This was mainly attributed to Libya’s human-smuggling industry experiencing a “general and sustained retreat” of armed groups’ support. The remaining smuggling operations, which once operated in plain sight, had now been driven underground, with migration largely taking place out of view, the report says.

Though this raised costs and limited the numbers travelling, it also left migrants at risk of abuse as smugglers avoid law enforcement and increasingly seek to boost profits through extortion, ransom and forced labour.

The effective curtailment of departures from Libya’s coast had also put migrants stranded in Libya at a higher risk of abuse and mistreatment at the hands of smugglers.

Departures from the Libyan coast continued falling throughout 2018

Mistreatment, theft, torture, sexual abuse, rape and labour exploitation, including through inducement into sex labour, are all rife throughout the course of a migrant’s journey through Libya, according to the report.

Ransoming, in particular, appeared to be on the rise, as the actual business of smuggling migrants into Europe becomes more challenging. 

This was also compounded by the chronic crisis in Libya’s migrant-detention system. Mismanagement and corruption, the report says, led to dire conditions at the centres and weak provision of service, with the situation heightened by periodic overcrowding.

The disappearance of migrants from detention centres was described as a critical issue, which, together with other overlapping crises, fuelled repeated protests at various centres and increased reports of suicide and suicide attempts.

Desperate migrants have repeatedly tried to break out of abusive detention centres.

There have been more consistent reports of migrants having to pay multiple ransoms before being released by smugglers. 

Sometimes this happened when released migrants were intercepted at sea or even on land and brought to a detention centre, where the same smugglers who previously held them in captivity would ‘purchase’ their release and then extract a second payment from them.

While such instances were not entirely new patterns, they appeared to have become more systematic and were being reported with greater frequency. 

The report mentions the case of a 33-year-old Cameroonian migrant who reported being swindled out of most of his money at the Algeria-Libya border. A smuggler leading them across the border disappeared when the group was intercepted by Algerian border guards, only to reappear on the Libyan side after all their belongings had been taken by the authorities.

Subsequently, the group was taken to a warehouse where the migrants were asked for a ransom. 

After paying, they were transported north to the west coast of Tripolitania where they were detained again and asked for a second ransom. The Cameroonian migrant eventually made the sea crossing and was rescued and taken to Malta last August 14.

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