GENEVA: Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC) wants to vet 3,000 mainly sub-Saharan migrants stranded in the southern town of Sabha before they are evacuated abroad to ensure that none were mercenaries fighting for deposed leader Moammar Qaddafi, an aid agency said on Friday.
"We got the word from the NTC that they want to screen the migrants first before they allow us to evacuate them," Jumbe Omari Jumbe, spokesman of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), told a news briefing.
"We have to stop all the evacuation process for the time being because the NTC says they have to make sure of the migrants, to register them and to identify who is a real migrant and who is not," he said.
Libyan fighters have captured the airport in Sirte, Qaddafi’s hometown and one of the last strongholds of soldiers loyal to him, Al-Jazeera reported on Friday. They also said they had captured a valley leading to the centre of the desert town of Bani Walid.
More than 3,000 migrants, mainly from Chad, Niger, Somalia, Eritrea and Nigeria but also from Jordan, Egypt and Pakistan, are stuck in Sabha, still held by forces loyal to Qaddafi but surrounded by opposition fighters, according to IOM.
Many lack passports or other identity papers, but fled to a transit center in the desert town seeking protection from increasing physical abuse and verbal harassment. The IOM has previously said it was worried about migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa being persecuted as suspected mercenaries.
Women and children are among the group, some believed to have lived for years in Libya. Before the war, between 1.5 million and 2.5 million migrants lived in the country, but more than 600,000 have fled, mainly to Tunisia and Egypt, it says.
"Since the beginning of the conflict really, the NTC has been saying that there are mercenaries who were imported by Colonel Qaddafi from Africa, and it’s quite clear that Colonel Qaddafi had extensive relations with sub-Saharan Africa, so we don’t know exactly where the truth lies," Jumbe said.
In cases of undocumented migrants, the IOM seeks help from the embassies of countries where they claim to be from, he said.
The IOM’s latest plan had been to evacuate the migrants by road to Tripoli, for further transport to Tunisia, as the road to Chad was deemed perilous, he said.
The IOM and the UN refugee agency voiced concern about the fate of foreigners still in Libya, including those in Tripoli.
"There are lots of migrants, particularly sub-Saharan Africans who are hiding somewhere, in the suburbs of Tripoli and other cities, that is the concern. We cannot reach them so we are unable to provide any kind of security," Jumbe said.
Adrian Edwards of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, referring to its hotline in the Tripoli area, said: "Large numbers of calls have been received from refugees and migrants reporting numerous protection incidents, including detention and need for food assistance."
