142 migrants deported back home to Guinea by Libya

macfranc007 December 28, 2017 Nigeria News today & Breaking news ▷ Read Nigerian newspapers 24/7 Oluwatobi Bolashodun

- Libya puts 142 illegal migrants on a flight back to Guinea

- This is an effort by the North African country to ease severe overcrowding in its detention centres

- The Guinean migrants were flown from two western cities to the city of Misrata

In an effort to ease severe overcrowding in its detention centres, Libya on Wednesday, December 27, put 142 illegal migrants on a flight back to Guinea with the help of the U.N. migration agency, officials said.

According to Reuters, the number of people stuck in Libyan detention centres has risen dramatically this year after an armed groups largely shut down the boat route to Italy from the smuggling hub of Sabratha.

NAIJ.com gathered that the International Organization for Migration (IOM) flew the Guinean migrants from two western cities to the city of Misrata, from where they boarded a plane for Conakry.

This is coming in the wake of a CNN report on migrants being sold for slave labour that sparked an international outcry.

Since 2014 migrant flows through Libya have surged. More than 600,000 people have crossed the central Mediterranean to Italy in the past three years.

However departures from Libya’s coast dropped in July when armed groups in Sabratha began preventing boats from leaving.

Thousands of migrants held near the coast emerged and were transferred to detention centres under the nominal control of the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli after clashes in the western city in September.

The Amnesty International said up to 20,000 people are being held in detention centres this month and are subject to “torture, forced labour, extortion, and unlawful killings”.

According to an earlier report by NAIJ.com, a 17-man fact-finding mission to bring back Nigerians trapped in Libya has been set up by President Muhammadu Buhari.

The Nigerian team is also expected to open talks with Libyan authorities on how to stop the exodus of Nigerians to the Arab country.

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The panel has 38 days to evacuate all Nigerians trapped in Libya, The Nation reports.

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