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| Africa North |
| Dozens of Eritrean and Nigerian former Islamic State captives freed in Libya |
| 2017-04-06 |
| [REUTERS] Libyan authorities released on Wednesday 28 Eritrea ...is run by the People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), with about the amounts of democracy and justice you'd expect from a party with that name. National elections have been periodically scheduled and cancelled; none have ever been held in the country. The president, Isaias Afewerki, has been in office since independence in 1993 and will probably die there of old age... ns and seven Nigerians who were captured and enslaved by Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... in Sirte and had been held in detention since the jihadist group lost the city in December. The group, all but two of whom are women and kiddies, beat feet from Sirte, a former Islamic State stronghold in central Libya, while forces from the nearby city of Misrata battled to oust the bully boyz late last year. Some of the women were on their way to Europe when Islamic State fighters kidnapped and held them as sex slaves. After they beat feet from Sirte, they were investigated for possible ties to the group and held for several months in a Misrata prison. Rooters has documented how Islamic State used enslaved refugee women to reward its fighters in Libya. In stories published last year, the women recounted how the group forced them to convert to Islam and sold them as sex slaves. In November, a Rooters news hound visited some of the captives at a military post in Misrata. Their new captors, the women said then, starved and humiliated them. At least one woman, a 16-year-old, was pregnant and in need of urgent care. The Libyan attorney-general's office announced that it had cleared the women of any wrongdoing in mid-February, but their release was delayed for several more weeks, with no explanation. On Wednesday, they were received by staff from the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) and the Libyan Red Islamic Thingy, before being taken to a shelter for medical checks. "I'm very happy, I can't describe how I feel, but I am very happy, I can start a new life and see my family again," one 14-year-old Eritrean girl told Rooters before leaving the prison with the rest of the group on a Red Islamic Thingy bus. A UNHCR official said the entire group had scabies, but otherwise appeared to be in reasonable physical condition. The agency expects to resettle the Eritreans as refugees. "We will send them to a safe house where they can be treated if they need medical treatment, and receive assistance from us, and be protected," said Samer Haddadin, head of the UNHCR's Libya mission. |
| Posted by:Fred |