Libya threatened by foreign fighters

Foreign fighters and commercial military organizations pose a severe security threat to Libya, particularly Russia’s Wagner Group, which has broken international law.

Experts also accused seven Libyan armed groups of consistently employing unlawful imprisonment to punish perceived opponents.

It was despite international and domestic civil rights rule barring torture.

“Migrants have been especially susceptible to human rights abuses and have been subjected to acts of slavery, rape, and torture on a regular basis,” the panel wrote.

After a NATO-backed rebellion deposed strongman Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, the oil-rich North African country was thrown into chaos.

Gaddafi was later slain.

It was then split between two opposing governments, one in the east, backed by military commander Khalifa Haftar, and one in the capital, Tripoli, which was recognized by the UN.

Different militias and international powers assist either side.

According to the article, Chadian rebel groups operate out of Libya, and Haftar has recruited Sudanese fighters.

The panel has witnessed Turkish-backed Syrian fighters in government military camps in Tripoli, while Haftar-affiliated Syrian fighters operate with Russia’s Wagner Group fighters in the strategically important northern city of Sirte and adjacent Jufra.

According to the report, at least 300 of these Syrians have returned home and have not been replaced by Haftar.

A Samsung electronic tablet left on a Libyan battlefield by a Wagner mercenary and retrieved by the BBC in early 2021, according to the panel, is legitimate.

It included maps showing the positions of 35 unmarked anti-personnel mines in the Ain Zara district of south Tripoli, which was a front-line area under Haftar’s authority at the time, with Wagner’s help.

Several mines had never been documented as being in Libya before, according to the panel, and their transit so breached the UN arms embargo.

Two civilian mine clearers were killed after a booby-trapped mine burst during a mine clearance operation, the report informed.

According to the experts, four migrants were subjected to human rights violations in secret prison facilities run by human traffickers in the Libyan desert and Bani Walid along the northwest coast.

They say, victims were enslaved, physically abused, starved, and denied medical care.

“Two former female detainees, who were 14 and 15-year-old girls at the time, further testified to the panel that multiple perpetrators repeatedly raped them, subjected them to sexual slavery and other forms of sexual violence during the period of over 18 months in a secret detention facility in Bani Walid,” the report said.