The United Nations on Friday urged Libyan authorities and the international community to make sure around 3,400 migrants and refugees in trapped detention centres in war-wracked Tripoli are freed "immediately".
"We appeal to the authorities in Libya and the international community to ensure that migrants and refugees held in such detention facilities are immediately released," said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights spokesman Rupert Colville.
Colville urged the pace of evacuation, resettlement and voluntary humanitarian returns of the migrants and refugees to be rapidly stepped up and "alternatives to detention" to be found.
During a recent visit to Tripoli's Zintan detention centre, where 654 refugees and migrants are held, a team from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights found the migrants in dire conditions, Colville said.
"We found them severely malnourished, lacking water, locked in overcrowded warehouses reeking with the smell of rubbish and waste from overflowing latrines," he said.
The migrants and refugees detained in Zintan reportedly receive only one meal of 200 grams of plain pasta per day, while some 432 Eritreans detained in the facility – 132 of them children – allegedly receive only half of this amount, Colville said.
"The conditions at Zintan Detention Centre amount to inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, and may also amount to torture," Colville said.
Over 60 people with tuberculosis are locked in a separate isolation hangar at Zintan while 30 others have been moved to the Gharyan Detention Centre, south of Tripoli, very close to the current frontline," Colville said.
He was referring to the deadly warfare that began in early April when eastern warlord Khalifa Haftar ordered an assault on Tripoli by his self-styled Libyan National Army, resulting in fierce fighting between the militia and forces loyal to the internationally recognised government.
Around 22 people have died of tuberculosis and other illnesses in Zintan detention since last September 2018, Colville stated.
OHCHR calls on Libya's UN-backed government to rapidly probe ongoing reports of disappearances and human trafficking after migrants and refugees were intercepted at sea by the Libya's coast guard, he said.
Over 2,300 people have been picked up off the coast of Libya and put in detention facilities this year and the Libyan Coast Guard claims it has delivered hundreds of people to a facility in the northwestern port city of Al-Khoms including 203 on 23 May, Colville noted.
Yet the Al-Khoms facility reports that there are currently only 30 migrants present, Colville said. "This is particularly worrying," he noted.
"We urge the Government of National Accord to immediately launch an independent investigation to locate these missing people," he said.
"Libya has a heightened duty of care to protect the lives of individuals deprived of liberty, including providing them with the necessary medical care."
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