Libyan authorities said they detained over 2,000 migrants at dawn on February 3 in coordinated raids after demolishing their homes. The raids took place in Sebha, southern Libya, where numerous cases of violence against migrants have been documented.
Dozens of police vehicles pulled up at dawn on February 3 in residential areas of Sebha, a city in southern Libya. Assisted by the military, they carried out coordinated raids, detaining over 2,000 migrants while demolishing their homes and makeshift shelters. The city is known as an important hub for migrants from sub-Saharan and central Africa trying to reach the Libyan coast. The operation targeted "sites where illegal migrants gather in the city," said Libyan authorities on Facebook.
The Libyan Ministry of Interior published videos on social media showing the austere rooms, where sub-Saharan migrants were made to sleep on the bare ground, sometimes on blankets, with only sun seeping through holes in the wooden roof as a source of light.
In other images taken the day of the raids, dozens of people emerged in line from the makeshift shelters. Police officers armed with Kalashnikovs later ordered them to sit on the ground and wait for instructions. Numerous women and several young children were among the migrants.
The authorities demolished a major migrant camp with bulldozers, flattening its makeshift shelters.
‘A firm message to smuggling networks’
The Libyan authorities didn't communicate where they had taken the detained migrants. Yet they were likely transferred to detention centers, where migrants are often detained until they can pay a ransom worth several hundred euros.
The operation intended to "strengthen controls and send a strong message to smuggling networks," wrote the national authorities on Facebook. An official in one of the videos released by the Libyan Ministry of Interior said, "it is illegal to rent apartments to undocumented migrants". The uniformed official added that, "this year, we are going to 'cleanse' all the neighborhoods [where] undocumented migrants live".
According to the organization Refugees in Libya, which documents the daily lives of migrants in Libya, "the actions bear no clear connection to migration regulation or residency enforcement procedures [but rather appear] linked to local political disputes and security rivalries." The organization is concerned that "migration is being used as a pretext for collective punishment and political retaliation."
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Sebha and its slave market
Sebha is one of the region's main migration hubs. Most sub-Saharan Africans who leave their country hoping to reach the Libyan coast and later Europe travel through the city. Yet Sabha is also a very dangerous place for these migrants. A US journalist from CNN managed to film a slave market in 2017 in the southern city.
The InfoMigrants editorial team has received numerous accounts over the years from migrants who say they were detained, tortured and sometimes resold in Sebha by human traffickers.
In 2017, 16-year-old Issa contacted InfoMigrants to describe his detention in a clandestine prison in Sabha. Deprived of food, medicine, and water, and forced into silence, migrants held in these centers die by the dozens. "You have to be in good health. People who arrive sick die in less than a week," said Issa, who weighed only 45 kilograms after a month of detention.
In 2020, Ibrahim, a 20-year-old Senegalese man, also contacted InfoMigrants to share the story of his ordeal after being detained in an unofficial prison in Sabha. "Our captors beat us every day and called our families. I would call my mother during the beaters. She would hear me screaming, and I would ask her to send me money so I could get out. She was crying on the other end of the line; it was very hard," said the young man.
In yet another sign of the violence inflicted on migrants in the region, the bodies of at least 65 migrants were discovered in March 2024 in a mass grave in the middle of the desert, between Sabha and Tripoli.