Al-Jufra Security Directorate said on Monday that ongoing criminal investigations with a number of human traffickers revealed the buying and selling of immigrants, saying they were beating the immigrants, torturing them and abusing them in order to blackmail their families for ransom.
The Directorate explained that there was a "widespread trafficking" of illegal immigrants, in addition to bargaining with the families of kidnapped immigrants to obtain a ransom in exchange for their release for up to $10,000 per person, otherwise they would be killed.
It said that these money transfers were seized, and the committee concluded that immigrants were subjected to sexual exploitation and starvation, to the point of melting plastic pipes on their backs.
The Security Directorate found that when human trafficking gangs fail to obtain the money they want, they get rid of the immigrants by shooting them, then burying them in the desert," which is what the "confessions of the perpetrators and the testimonies of the surviving immigrants" concluded.
The Directorate ended up demolishing the dens used to store and sell people to human traffickers in other areas, and saw that this aims to "eliminate such inhumane criminal practices and activities."
Last Friday, Libyan Public Prosecution began exhuming the bodies of 58 immigrants in Al-Kufra - southeastern Libya - in order to collect DNA samples and dissect them to determine the cause and manner of death.
