PARIS — Migrants trying to reach Europe face routine rape and sexual torture throughout their journey and especially in Libya, with men facing abuse nearly as routinely as women, according to a study based on dozens of interviews with aid workers and migrants. Smugglers torture migrants and film it to extract ransom payments from their families, and to thin the number of people in their unofficial prisons, according to the study. In repeated AP interviews with migrants in Europe and in Africa, Libya is the place they don’t discuss. The survivors were ultimately shipped to an official Libyan detention centre. The only people pulling migrants from the Mediterranean waters off the Libyan coast take them right back where they came from.

Source: National Post March 25, 2019 14:03 UTC