Yazidi man 'tortured' after Libyan militia 'abducts' 110 Syrian, Lebanese migrants

A member of the persecuted Yazidi religious community has suffered torture and blackmail after being kidnapped by a Libyan militia while trying to reach Italy by sea last month, his brother has said.

Moustafa Mohammad Sharaf, 37, was among some 110 Syrian and Lebanese migrants who left northern Lebanon by boat on 10 August. They were reportedly abducted en route by the Libyan armed group Tariq Ben Zeyad Brigade (TBZ), according to MENA Rights Group, a Swiss-based legal advocacy organisation.

Sharaf's brother Farhad Mamo, 38, who has lived in Sweden since 2016, said the father-of-two had been mistreated because of his background.

"The conditions he is living in are very dire, and he is being subjected to blackmail and humiliation because he is from the Yazidi community," Mamo told The New Arab on Tuesday.

"He tried to contact me from the phones of one of the kidnappers and they demanded a ransom of €4,000 because he is not Muslim.

"My family and I are very worried about him because he is being subjected to torture and beatings and because his health is deteriorating as a result of the violence he is experiencing."

Almost all the migrants have been released, MENA Rights Group said on Wednesday. They remain in Libya, mostly staying in hotels or with family.

Between two and seven others are still being held. It could not be confirmed whether Sharaf had been released or remained detained, though his brother had nothing new to add on Thursday and said the communications so far were that he hadn't been freed.

Married, father-of-two

Sharaf is the married father of two children, aged six and 10. He was raised in Mamo's family after his mother passed away but they are not biological brothers.

The Yazidis are a Kurdish-speaking ethnoreligious minority native to Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

They suffered a genocide in Iraq at the hands of the Islamic State group in 2014 and have long faced serious persecution.

Sharaf left Afrin, the Syrian city where he and Mamo are from, in August 2018, months after it was captured by Turkish forces.

"After the fall of the city of Afrin, extremist militias entered," said Mamo, who is also a Yazidi, adding that the situation became dangerous for members of the community. Sharaf first headed elsewhere in Syria before travelling to Lebanon.

Tariq Ben Zeyad Brigade

The TBZ militia is headed by powerful General Khalifa Haftar's son Saddam, Amnesty International said in a December research briefing that accused the group of "subjecting thousands of Libyans and migrants to brutal and relentless abuses since 2016".

Libya is politically divided between two rival governments. The internationally recognised administration is based in the country's west and the other, which Haftar supports, is located in the east.

Migrant 'pullbacks' by TBZ have become commonplace since May in the area of the Mediterranean Sea where Malta is in charge of search-and-rescue efforts, Al Jazeera said last month.

The migrants who left Lebanon on 10 August were in this zone when they reported being pursued by a ship with a Libyan flag on 18 August.

They told Alarm Phone, a hotline for migrant boats in trouble, that they were being fired at by armed men, with one person on board left injured.

MENA Rights Group said migrants told their families they were abducted by TBZ's 20/20 Company. Human Rights Watch last year described 20/20 as "a unit under" the battalion.

Ganfouda Detention Centre

TBZ brought the migrants to the northwestern Libyan port city of Misrata, MENA Rights Group said, though this area is controlled by the west-based government.

The migrants were then moved to Ganfouda Detention Centre in Benghazi in the northeast, the advocacy organisation added.

They were forced during their detention to carry out work such as digging holes, MENA Rights Group said, adding that some, though not Sharaf, were made to work in a zoo.

The NGO also said some migrants had been told to pay $600 to secure their release.

In December 2021, the UN human rights office said Ganfouda Detention Centre was under the control of the Ministry of Interior's Department for Combatting Illegal Migration.

A national unity government had been formed earlier that year, though in September 2021 the east-based parliament withdrew its confidence. It appointed a new rival Government of National Stability (GNS) in 2022.

Mamo said the 20/20 Company was jailing his brother.

The New Arab could not confirm who the authorities at the detention centre were.

This news outlet attempted to call Othman Abdul Jalil, a spokesperson for eastern Libya's GNS, multiple times on Thursday but could not reach him for comment.

'Knocked on many doors'

MENA Rights Group legal researcher Tanya Boulakovski said her organisation strongly urges Libyan authorities to take immediate action to release the detained migrants and ensure their rights are fully respected according to international human rights standards.

The advocacy NGO has also referred the cases of Sharaf and three other migrants, at least two of whom have since been released, to the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID).

"MENA Rights Group is deeply concerned about the treatment of the 110 migrants," Boulakovski said.

"We have knocked on many doors and reached out to various UN agencies and institutions, but so far, we have been unsatisfied with their response."

After the publication of this article, Boulakovski clarified that MENA Rights Group's dissatisfaction with United Nations bodies did not include the WGEID, which she confirmed had taken action.

Contacted for comment prior to this clarification, the WGEID's secretariat said: "The working group would like to state that in regard to the reports of the migrants in this particular situation, the WGEID did receive submissions to which it transmitted communications to respective authorities.

"The working group reiterates that due to the confidential nature of its humanitarian procedure, no comment on the individual cases can be provided to you."

The secretariat said that following the working group's 131st session, which began on 18 September and ended on Wednesday, the WGEID will publish a report with information on actions taken.

Any humanitarian organisation wishing to get in touch with Farhad Mamo, the brother of Moustafa Mohammad Sharaf, should visit MENA Rights Group's contact page.

Editor's note: This article was updated on 18 October 2023 after Tanya Boulakovski clarified that MENA Rights Group's dissatisfaction with UN bodies did not include the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances.