France has backed off from delivering 6 new boats to Libyan Coast Guard of the Government of National Accord due to the status quo in the country.
Defence Minister Florence Parly had announced in February that France would provide semi-rigid inflatable Sillinger crafts to “help Libya’s unity government consolidate its control of the war-torn country.”
“This transfer was initially planned to help Libya, but the ministry has decided not to deliver the vessels to this state,” the army ministry wrote on November 26 to the administrative appeals court in Paris.
France backed off from this “controversial” deal amid international pressure over the cooperation between European cooperation with Libyan GNA Coast Guard.
Rights groups assailed the plan, accusing Libyan officials of routinely picking up migrants in the Mediterranean and bringing them back to overcrowded detention centres, where many have been victims of abuse and forced labour.
The Guardian revealed in a report new details about the “Human trafficking mafia” in Libya and the need for the EU to take action to save the immigrants and refugees I’m detention centers, which have turned to “places to make money.”
The newspaper said the EU isn’t able to work off the Libyan coast, citing “Limite”-marked leaked document. The EU has admitted in a leaked report that it cannot monitor the Libyan coastguard and that the detention of migrants is a “profitable business model” for Libya’s government.
The document, written by the presidency of the EU council for a “high-level working group on asylum and migration”, reports that there is no record of the numbers of detention camps.
A number of the detention centres “are alleged of having links to human trafficking” and “there is no proper registration system for migrants”. “Serious cases of corruption and bribery in the centres have been detected,” the EU paper says.
“EU officials are not allowed onshore to monitor the makeup or activities of the Libyan coastguard to the “security challenges. The government in Libya has failed to improve the situation in the camps or deal with the regular reports of “disappearances” of people picked up by the Libyan coastguard. The government’s reluctance to address the problems raises the question of its own involvement”, the paper says.
