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Ghanaians Languishing in Libyan Camps

Ghanaian Chronicle (Accra)
NEWS
December 17, 2004
Posted to the web December 20, 2004

By Sebastian R. Freiku
Kumasi.
HUNDREDS OF Ghanaians and other African nationals are said to be languishing in
detention at deportation camps in the Libyan capital, Tripoli.
The detainees, mostly from Ghana and Nigeria, are constantly subjected to
beatings and other forms of torture on a daily basis.
Reports reaching The Chronicle indicate that the Libyan authorities had for
sometime now embarked on the arrest of foreign nationals to discourage them
from using Libya as a transit point to Italy.
Most of these foreign nationals allegedly have no valid traveling documents.
The Chronicle has gathered that the detainees had been confined to deportation
camps (zanzu) for the past three months under inhuman conditions.
Miss Esther Hanson, a 30-year-old hairdresser and a native of Ashanti Bekwai
who broke the news to The Chronicle in Kumasi, narrated how her husband, Yaw
Adjei, a native of Berekum and an accident victim, was bundled into the camp
from Benghazi and is currently suffering incarceration at the camp.
Miss Hanson was herself deported in mid November this year, among a group of
over a hundred Ghanaians.
She complained amid sobs that under normal circumstances, the arrested persons
should have been deported as soon as they were arrested but they continued to
suffer in the camps, which she described as hell.
According to her, some of the detainees were mentally broken down from fear and
frustration.
"It is pathetic to see signs of deprivation and starvation on their faces," she
noted, following a visit to her husband at the camp before she had the good
fortune of being deported home.
Miss Hanson, an expectant mother, looked pale and tired as she appealed
passionately to the President and Minister for Foreign Affairs to take
immediate steps to ensure the safe deportation of these souls back home.
She petitioned African leaders to negotiate with the Libyan Authorities to be
more humane in dealing with the detainees.

   

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