After watching a video, where an auction of slave market was recorded, CNN correspondent worked to verify the video and to investigate the story.
With hidden cameras inserted into a building outside the capital Tripoli last month, She watched a dozen people auctioned in six or seven minutes.
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“Does anyone have to dig, it’s a digger, a big strong man, he’ll dig,” the salesman said, “What do I offer for sale, what do I offer for sale?”
The buyers raise their hands and the price rises. “500, 550, 600, 650 …” In a matter of minutes, it was all over, and the men silently accepting their fate, were being transferred to their new “masters.”
Every year tens of thousands of people cross the borders of Libya. These are refugees fleeing violent conflicts or migrant workers seeking better opportunities in Europe.
Most of them sold all their possessions to finance the journey through Libya to the coast and the gateway to the Mediterranean Sea.
However, a special operation by the Libyan Coast Guard led to the fact that only a few boats managed to sail to the sea.
This means that smugglers are left with many potential travelers. Then smugglers become masters while immigrants and refugees are slaves.
The smugglers deprived them of food, abused them and treated them badly. They were beaten, They were mutilated.
The testimony documented by CNN was handed over to the Libyan authorities, and they promised to investigate the matter.
First deputy Nasser Khazam of the government agency to combat illegal immigration told CNN that he was aware that organized gangs operated smuggling networks of people inside the country.
“They fill a boat with a hundred people, these people will do (the journey at sea) or they will not do it,” Khazam told CNN. “The smuggler does not care as long as he gets the money, and the immigrant can manage to go to Europe or die at sea.”
“The situation is terrible,” said Mohamed Abed Akir, director of operations and emergency in the International Organization for Migration, in a statement he published after his return from Tripoli in April. “Some reports are absolutely horrifying and the latest reports of ‘slave markets’ of immigrants are added to a long list of scandals.”
