The United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council on Monday urged the authorities in Libya to share more information on mass graves and other serious crimes linked to the civil war in the country, reported The UN News.
“Victims and their families are impatient for authorities to provide timely information on investigations and ensure the perpetrators are held accountable,” said Mohammad Auajjar, chairperson of the UN’s Independent Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) on Libya.
The FFM was established by the Human Rights Council in June last year to investigate allegations of human rights abuses in the country since 2016.
The statement was given following a visit by Auajjar’s team to the North African country, where they heard testimonies from the relatives of victims related to extrajudicial killings, torture, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, human trafficking, internal displacement, the existence of mass graves and morgues containing corpses that families do not have access to.
“Libyan authorities owe it to them to share information about their loved ones, to meet them and give them answers,” said Auajjar. “Silence is unacceptable.”
He said the UN has also asked repeatedly for multiple investigations reports concerning serious human rights violations but there has been no satisfactory response from the Libyan authorities so far.
The UN mission members had plans to visit Sebha to meet some of the victims of human rights violations but the authorities did not grant them access to prisons and detention centers across the country, despite repeated pleas. Notably, human traffickers have transported huge numbers of migrants from Chad, Niger, and Sudan to Europe via Sebha.
The UN team also called for the immediate release of Iftikhar Boudra, who was detained in Benghazi four years ago over her critical comments about militarization in eastern Libya. Boudra is reportedly very ill and has not been allowed visits from her family for months.
