Rights groups to Italy: Don’t renew migrant deal with Libya

ROME — Human rights advocates and aid groups slammed Italy on Friday for deciding to extend a deal that facilitates the return of Europe-bound migrants to detention centers in Libya where detainees are at risk for getting raped and tortured.

Amnesty International said the Italian government’s plan to renew the deal for another three years on Sunday makes it “complicit in this abuse.”

A 2017 accord between Italy and Libya included equipment and training for the Libyan coast guard to intercept migrants who set off in smugglers’ boats from the shores of the Northern African country. Migrants who get caught are returned to overcrowded detention facilities. U.N. refugee officials have said that migrants held in the centers are frequently beaten, raped and denied adequate food.

Doctors Without Borders, which with another humanitarian group operates a ship that rescues migrants from the Mediterranean Sea, joined the chorus of objections to the deal’s renewal. It said Italy’s aid contributes to trapping “innocent and vulnerable” people in war-ravaged Libya.

The human rights commissioner for the Council of Europe, Dunja Mijatovic, on Friday expressed “regret that Italian authorities have not scrapped that agreement or — as a minimum — changed its terms.”

Citing the worsening armed conflict between rival governments in Libya, she said “a great amount of evidence continues to point to serious human rights violations faced there by migrants and asylum-seekers.”