IOM Helps 172 Stranded Nigerian Migrants to Return Home from Libya
Libya - IOM yesterday (10/03) helped 172 stranded Nigerian migrants, including 6 women, to return home to Nigeria from Libya. One hundred forty-two had spent months in immigration detention centers.
The repatriation – done in close cooperation with Libyan authorities, Nigeria’s Embassy in Tripoli and the IOM office in Nigeria – was on board a charter flight departing Tripoli’s Mitiga Airport and arriving in Lagos in the morning.
Before departure, IOM Libya staff provided clothes, shoes, underwear, and hygiene kits. A mobile patrol from the Tripoli Security Committee escorted the buses to Mitiga airport.
Almost all the migrants traveling on this charter were detained as they were trying to cross to Europe. Despite ending their journey of hope inside detention centres, these migrants consider themselves lucky to have escaped death on the Mediterranean, which this year has taken the lives of 97 migrants and refugees on the route linking Libya to Italy.
The funds for this charter were provided by the European Union and the Italian Ministry of Interior, under the project called Prevention and Management of Irregular Migration Flows from the Sahara Desert to the Mediterranean Sea (SAHMED).
The stories were similar in the light of the current unstable situation in Libya, which caused migrants many physical and psychological problems.
For further information, please contact Othman Belbeisi at IOM Libya, Tel +216 29 600389, Email: obelbeisi@iom.int or Ashraf Hassan, IOM Geneva, Tel: + +216 29794707Email: ashassan@iom.int
Adam, a 26-year-old construction worker, said: "The beginning of my suffering was in the desert road from Agadez (Niger) to Al Qatrun (South Libya). I was ill and my sickness got worse during the trip, so the driver threw me out of the car in the desert, where I stayed for a whole day suffering from fever without water, food or shelter. Then I had been rescued by two people who took me to the detention centre in Al Qatrun. I remained there for nearly 3 weeks and had been released after I contacted my family to pay 1200 LYD (916 USD) for medical treatment.”
Josh, 18 years old, one of the youngest detainees in Abu Saleem Centre, said: "This is not the first time that I have been detained in Libya since I came with my brother (Issa) almost a year ago. I stayed alone in Qatrun detention centre for about a month, after the release of my brother, until he was able to pay an amount of approximately 1050 LYD (800 USD) to someone there to release me.” His brother Christin, 34, continues. "We lived with my parents and my sister... After graduating from college, I worked in the field of computers, but the income was very humble so we decided to travel to Libya. My father gave me money and I decided to take my brother Josh with me because I thought that the trip would be safe and employment opportunities were available. However, the reality was much worse than I imagined. I paid a total of nearly 6,500 LYD (4960 USD) to get here and as you can see, we are being held in a detention centre with nothing. "
The road from Sabha to Tripoli is not less difficult from the one of Agadez to Al Qatrun, where sometimes smuggling gangs put more than 22 migrants in a Toyota pickup truck and pay bribes at security checkpoints. Usually they switched cars to transport migrants (each smuggler transports within his area).
Yusuf, 18, came to Libya nine months ago looking for work and money to cross to Europe, or the "Land of Dreams", as he calls it. "Crossing to Europe was my dream. In order to achieve it, I bore the long risky road, hunger and cold but now my dream is to go back safe to my mother, my brothers and my friends. And IOM helped me to make it true.”