Migrants were coerced into paying for their release from a Benghazi prison

The 246 migrants rescued off Malta last week were coerced into paying for their release from a Benghazi prison, only to be forced onto an overcrowded boat with little food and water, the UNHCR revealed yesterday. The group of Africans, including 47 women and 28 children who arrived in Malta on November 9 after being rescued by the Armed Forces of Malta, have narrated their trail of horror to officials. The migrants, mainly Eritrean, told UNHCR Malta that Libyan human traffickers gave them food and water for just two days. They then crammed them onto a boat with many fearing the worst when on the fifth day their engine broke down. “This confirms that the new Libya is not safe. Armed groups are exploiting foreigners and acting with impunity,” Jon Hoisaeter, UNHCR Representative to Malta, told The Sunday Times. The stories told to UNHCR staff by the Malta arrivals exposed a systematic system of exploitation of asylum seekers in Libya. “Some people approached us in prison and asked us for money to be released and go by boat to Europe. There was no choice; that is the only way to be free,” migrants told the UN staff in Malta. “If we did not behave they would have beaten us, and left...