The entire world was shocked when 900 African migrants drowned in the Mediterranean this past April, trying to find a better life in Europe. Yet the drowned migrants only tell only a part of the story of illegal immigration along Libya’s shores.

Stratospheric profits

M, a university student in his early twenties, became a human trafficker who runs his trade by phone from Tripoli. He accepted to speak to Correspondents on condition of anonymity.

The entire world was shocked when 900 African migrants drowned in the Mediterranean this past April, trying to find a better life in Europe. Yet the drowned migrants only tell only a part of the story of illegal immigration along Libya’s shores.

Stratospheric profits

M, a university student in his early twenties, became a human trafficker who runs his trade by phone from Tripoli. He accepted to speak to Correspondents on condition of anonymity.

He said working in trafficking people in his boats which depart from Zwara city is a good source of income – one trafficking operation could earn him as much as $150,000.

“I have many assistants, including teenagers,” says M.  “They see me as a role model and want to become famous traffickers.” Some of the M’s helpers are married with families – their livelihood depends on a flourishing human trafficking markets.

Lucrative racism

“I hate these black Africans who only bring us diseases,” says M. “They are detestable. However, this does not stop me from considering them a good source of huge profits.”

M added, as if discussing livestock trade, that the prices of people trafficking are specified according to gender and color and the highest profits come from trafficking Syrians who are charged 1,000 Euros for each man, 1,200 Euros for each woman and 900 Euros for each child. “As for blacks,” he said, “The same prices are applied in US dollars.”  

“This is our internal trade in Zwara city and it helped the residents to support their fishing business, arms trade and power generators supply. It brought them a lot of financial gains. It is a common protection system. We guarantee their silence and they guarantee economic prosperity,” he said.

Pathways for money

M said the trafficking starts by gathering the migrants in secret barns until enough have joined. Then, their journey starts by getting on fishing vessels whose capacity can reach 400 people.

M’s assistants send him a message when they arrive in Italy. After deducting $10,000 for the Moroccan sailor, M’s net profit for each trafficking operation amounts to $150,000.

M bragged that not even policemen could not fight their business even under Gaddafi. “Are the current weak security forces expecting to fight our business? In fact, many of them provide safe pathways in exchange for money and we have no problem in making deals with them,” he explained with confidence.   

Europe encourages trafficking

Colonel Ayoub Kasem, the Libyan Coastguards’ official spokesperson, angrily said European authorities “are not serious in fighting illegal immigration. On the contrary, they allow and encourage it. This is related to turning a blind eye to the illegal fishing boats in our territorial waters especially by the Italian authorities.”   

Kasem claimed that this business is led by trafficking mafias whose power extends beyond Libya. He said the coastguards’ mission does not include securing the land as it is the responsibility of the Ministry of Interior that “suffers the mafias’ domination over its apparatuses.”

Professional trafficking

M boasted that the migrants themselves trust his way of doing things and call him from abroad to smuggle a friend or a family stuck in Libya, as they know that his aim is not only to gain profits but also to “secure the arrival of the goods safely.”  

Sardine season

M considers himself different from “unprofessional traffickers whose sole aim is to get profits without caring much about their reputation. They use small fishing boats which are unequipped for transporting people and they launch them during the death season in January and February from deep coasts such as Qarboli, Zawya, Khams and Sabrata. I would not risk sending a cat with them,” he said.

The traffickers’ work has resulted in dead Libyans, in the water and on the Libyan coast. Malek Marseet, the Red Crescent’s official spokesperson in Tripoli, said they collected the corpses of migrants of 107 bodies by the end of 2014.

Slaves for sale

For the migrants who don’t make it to sea, many are kept in sheltering centers. An insider in the Libyan Ministry of Interior said the policy of getting rid of the African migrants in the sheltering centers is a source of profits and new way of trafficking.

Through these centers, it has become easy to traffic slave laborers. Most of the migrants are exploited as farm workers without any documents or health certificates. They get nothing in exchange for their work since they were sold in the sheltering centers.

These centers used to classify migrants after arresting them, the ministry source said. Those who had documents were given health certificates and released if their embassies did not demand their deportation. Those who did not have documents were imprisoned for months under inhuman conditions before being sold by prison officials.

Trafficking in Libya is turning into a slave trade. All things are possible as long as pockets and bank accounts are overwhelmed with money. M would not have become a master in this profession without the support of policemen.