Libya warning to EU: Terrorists posing as migrants will slip unchecked into Europe among thousands crossing the Med unless the West steps in

* Libya has called for help from the EU to stem tide of migrants entering country
* Prime Minister warned terrorists could be among those trying to reach Europe
* Around 100,000 migrants have left Libya for Italy via the sea so far this year
* Another 700,000 are still in the country and Libya wants help to secure border

Mail Online

By Gareth Davies and Joseph Curtis

23 August 2017

Europe has been warned ISIS terrorists will slip unchecked into the continent unless Western powers do more to stop them.

The prime minister of Libya said the EU will be accountable if jihadis are able to 'move freely' through Europe and stage attacks.

It is understood the country is putting together a five-point plan to present to Brussels to 'solve the crisis' and police its borders.

The warning comes after attacks in Barcelona and Finland last week. Fourteen people died in the Catalan city after a van ploughed into tourists in La Ramblas while another was killed in nearby Cambrils when a group of people were run down by an Audi driven by armed jihadis.

Meanwhile in Finland, two women were stabbed to death with an 18-year-old Moroccan asylum-seeker suspect shot in the leg and subsequently arrested in connection with the killings.

According to The Times, Libyan leader Faiez Serraj said terrorists were passing unvetted among tens of thousands of migrants entering the country via its southern borders.

He told the paper: 'When migrants reach Europe, they will move freely. If, God forbid, there are terrorist elements among the migrants, a result of any incident will affect all of the EU.'

Mr Serraj added his plan would recruit the EU to help secure Libya's southern border and lift a UN arms embargo to allow the country's coastguard to be better armed.

He told the paper: 'The EU must do more to us help face smuggling. We can't put the burden on Libya and Italy alone as it is important for all of Europe.'

Almost 100,000 migrants have left Libya for Italy so far in 2017 and around 700,000 more are believed to still be in the north African country.

Meanwhile anti-migrant feeling is on the rise in Italy where the Five star Movement, which campaigns against allowing migrants into the country, is expected to strongly challenge the Democratic Party currently in power at elections next year.

Luigi Di Maio, who is expected to run as Five Star's candidate for prime minister, told The Times Italy was becoming a 'refugee camp'

He said: 'We have ten million Italians living in poverty, while migrants are being given €38 a day to live. It's a pressure cooker that could explode.'

Meanwhile Italy's foreign minister Angelino Alfano has claimed the country has been 'abandoned' by the EU over the migrant crisis and said 'Italy cannot cope with the burden alone'.

The abuse migrants who make the journey are being subjected to coupled with the potential terror threat make The Times special investigation doubly worrying.

Once they get to Libya, having travelled largely from the Middle East and other parts of Africa, many fall into the dangerous hands of gangs who keep them as slaves.

Male migrants are forced into back-breaking labour while the women are kept as sex slaves, and the majority are tortured in an attempt to squeeze ransom money from the prisoners' families, according to The Times.

Women who refuse to go into forced prostitution, without seeing a penny of what they earn, are repeatedly gang-raped by groups of up to eight men.

Groups of human traffickers pay as little as £550 for a person, and they are herded like cattle in their hundreds across the country in water tanks convoys protected by 150 militants with sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles. 

The end goal for the majority is to escape the brutality for mainland Europe, initially Italy, by jumping into dinghys and crossing the Mediterranean.

As a result, the anti-migrant Five Star Movement has pulled up level with the Democratic Party ahead of the elections next year.

Other parties with an anti-immigration stance have also seen a rise in the polls with the 200,000 places in Italian refugee centres already full.

In an attempt to combat the crisis, Serraj's five-point plan includes securing the southern border of Libya in an attempt to stem the flow of migrants from the rest of Africa.

Also in the plan is to lift a UN arms embargo so that the coastguard can be more effective and putting more pressure on other African nations to take back migrants. 


Armed group stopping migrant boats setting off across the Mediterranean sparks sudden drop in departures this month

An armed group is stopping migrant boats from setting off across the Mediterranean from a city west of Tripoli that has been a springboard for people smugglers, causing a sudden drop in departures over the past month, sources in the area said.

The revelation throws new light on the sharp reduction in migrant arrivals from Italy, which took over from the Aegean route as the main focus of European concerns in the crisis.

Arrivals in Italy from North Africa, the main route for migration to Europe this year, dropped by more than 50 percent in July from a year earlier, and August arrivals so far are down even further. July and August are peak months for migrant boats because of favourable sea conditions.

Sources in Sabratha, 70 km (45 miles) west of the capital, said the sudden drop had been caused by a new force in the seaside city, which is preventing migrants from leaving, often by locking them up.

The group in Sabratha 'works on the ground, the beach, to prevent the migrants leaving on boats towards Italy,' said a civil society organiser from the city, speaking on condition of anonymity.


The group is made up of several hundred 'civilians, policemen, army figures,' he said. It is conducting a 'very strong campaign' that was launched by a 'former mafia boss', said a second Sabratha source who follows smuggling activity closely.

A third source with contacts in Libya, who also asked not to be named, said the Sabratha group was making 'a significant effort to police the area'.

The two Sabratha sources said the group was running a detention centre for migrants who are turned back or taken from smugglers.

One sent a picture of hundreds of migrants sitting in the sand in front of a high wall.

One of the sources said he thought the group was seeking legitimacy and financial support from Tripoli, where European states have tried to partner with a U.N.-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) to stem migrant flows.

An official from the interior ministry's department for combating illegal migration in Sabratha did not respond to a request for comment.

It was not possible to contact the group, which the third source said was called Brigade 48, although other sources did not confirm this.

Italy has been trying to bolster the GNA's ability to stop people smuggling with cash, training and by sending a ship to help repair Tripoli's coastguard and navy vessels.

Some 600,000 migrants have reached Italy by sea from North Africa since 2014, testing the country's ability to cope. More than 12,000 have died trying.

Most leave from Libya's western coast. Following a local backlash against smugglers in Zuwara in the west in 2015, Sabratha became the most frequently used departure point.

Italy wants to replicate a deal with Libya that the EU struck with Turkey last year, largely shutting down the migrant route through Greece and the Balkans.

With a national election looming during the first half of next year, the government in Rome is under pressure to show it can stop, or at least slow, migration.

But any progress in Libya is likely to be fragile, with the country in a state of conflict since Muammar Gaddafi was ousted six years ago. Rival governments are vying for power and local militias battle each other for territory and smuggling profits.

Last week Italy seized on the drop in arrivals, with Interior Minister Marco Minniti saying he saw a 'light at the end of the tunnel'.

Migrants rescued last week in the Mediterranean confirmed that conditions had changed in Sabratha, according to a spokesman at the International Organization for Migration, which interviewed migrants who arrived in Trapani, Sicily, on Saturday.

'They said that it was very difficult to depart from Sabratha.

'There are people stopping the boats before they set out, and if they get out to sea they're immediately sent back,' said Flavio Di Giacomo, an IOM spokesman in Rome.

Some migrants were also turned back before reaching Sabratha, he said.

The European Union's border control agency Frontex last week said 'clashes in Sabratha' contributed to July's decline, also citing changeable weather and increased Libyan coastguard presence.

The Sabratha sources were not aware of any clashes.

Another shift in recent weeks has been a clampdown on smuggling of Bangladeshi and North African migrants through Tripoli's Mitiga airport, after a militia that controlled the trade was forced out by a GNA-aligned armed group at the start of July, Libyan and European officials said.

But that, like a slowing of flows into Libya through Niger, might take time to take effect. Hundreds of thousands of migrants are already in Libya.

In Sabratha, the changes may not stick.

In the past, with no central authority to constrain them, smugglers have adapted and routes have shifted, as already is happening.

Last week smugglers moved departures to east of Tripoli, near Al Khoms, Chris Catrambone, co-founder of the Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS) charity, told Reuters. Three large rubber boats set out from the east, he said, while only a small boat with 26 people was found west of Tripoli.

'The sea was like a lake last week and yet there were few boats,' Catrambone said.

Everyone on the Phoenix, a rescue vessel operated by MOAS, was taken aback because it was so unusual, he said.

The GNA has little control over armed groups in western Libya, including the capital, and none over factions that control the east of the country.

The civil society member from Sabratha said the new group there might stop working if it does not receive support from Tripoli.

The power of the smuggling networks would not be broken until there was a 'legitimate source of order' in Libya, said a senior diplomat, speaking of the change in Tripoli airport and comparing the situation to broken vase.

'In one corner we stuck it together, but everything else is in pieces.'


Source:  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4814728/Libya-warns-EU-terrorists-posing-migrants.html