Lampedusa Shipwreck Migrants Raped and Tortured by Traffickers
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/10436645/Lampedusa-shipwreck-migrants-raped-by-traffickers.html
[image: Italian policemen hold pictures of Palestinian Attour Abdalmenem
and Somali Mouhamud Elmi Muhidin]
Italian policemen hold pictures of Palestinian Attour Abdalmenem, left, and
Somali Mouhamud Elmi Muhidin in Palermo, Sicily. Abdalmenem and Muhidin
have been arrested with charges of being responsible of the ship disaster
of Oct. 3, 2013 off the coast of Lampedusa Photo: AP Photo/Alessandro
Fucarini
By AFP
5:04PM GMT 08 Nov 2013
Dozens of asylum-seekers on a boat that sank near the Italian coast last
month with the loss of 366 lives were raped and tortured in Libya before
starting their journey, the police said on Friday.
A group of 130 migrants from Eritrea were held for ransom in the desert,
according to testimony from survivors that led to the arrest of a Somali
man in Italy accused of being one of the traffickers.
The Somali, Libyan militiamen and Sudanese traffickers all took part in the
alleged assaults in a detention centre in Sabha - an oasis in the desert in
southwest Libya - that prosecutor Maurizio Scalia likened to "a
concentration camp".
"They forced us to watch our men being tortured with various methods
including batons, electric shocks to the feet. Whoever rebelled was tied
up," read the testimony of a 17-year-old Eritrean girl in the
investigation, La Repubblica daily reported.
The migrants were forced to pay up to €2,600 (£2,171) for their freedom and
their onward journey to the Libyan coast and a boat to Italy.
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"The women who could not pay were assaulted," the girl was quoted as saying
in her criminal charge.
She also described in horrific detail her own sexual assault, saying that
the Somali man - named by
police as 34-year-old Elmi Mouhamud Muhidin - was one of the three men who
raped her.
"They threw me on the ground, held me down and poured fuel on my head. It
burnt my hair,
then my face, then my eyes. Then the three of them raped me without
protection. After a quarter
of an hour I was beaten and taken back to the house." Mr Scalia said
simply: "All the women
in that centre were raped by Somalis and Libyans. It was like a
concentration camp."
Migrants from Eritrea and Somalia frequently speak of abuses along their
journeys to
Europe, particularly in an increasingly lawless Libya following the fall
of dictator Moamer Kadhafi.
Their allegations are rarely investigated, however, and migrant rights
groups complain
that more international action should be taken to ease their plight in the
countries they transit through.
The Somali was arrested this week on the remote Italian island of Lampedusa
where the October
3 shipwreck happened and has now been flown to Sicily where he faces up to
30 years in prison.
The man arrived on the island on October 25 and had been staying in the
local migrant centre,
pretending to be one of the refugees, investigators said.
The police said they had not yet worked out why the man had come to Italy
but added that he
"may have been looking for criminal contacts".
But he was spotted by some of the survivors who remembered him from their
incarceration
and risked being lynched by them inside the refugee centre.
"He was one of the leaders of the trafficking organisation," a police
spokeswoman told AFP.
Another man, the boat's 35-year-old Tunisian captain Khaled Bensalam, was
detained
immediately after the tragedy on charges of manslaughter.
He was one of the 155 survivors of the tragedy, almost all of whom are
still on
Lampedusa pending the investigation. Only four minors among the group have
been transferred to foster families.
A third man, 47-year-old Palestinian Attour Abdalmenem, has also been
arrested
on people trafficking charges in a separate investigation for allegedly
organising
a boat of Syrian migrants that also arrived on Lampedusa, the police said.
Italian authorities have vowed to crack down on the people trafficking
rings that
have been behind the influx of more than 35,000 asylum-seekers so far this
year to the country's coasts.
Most of them come from Eritrea, Somalia and Syria and Italy has asked for
the European Union to step up assistance in dealing with the arrivals and
countering the criminal networks behind them.
*Edited by Hannah Strange*
Received on Fri Nov 08 2013 - 20:05:11 EST