Italian opposition MPs visit Gjadra camp: Infiltration of migrants in violation of human rights

At the Gjader detention center, Sharmin walks with difficulty into the interview room. The shoes he is given are too big for his feet and have no laces.

 He had arrived in Zuara from Bangladesh, initially passing through Dubai and Egypt. He had been told that he could make a lot of money in Libya, so he decided to make that his destination.

But as soon as he arrived, he started working as a painter. After two months, Libyan police kidnapped him and handed him over to the mafia. He was forced to live with dozens of others in a large warehouse.

"They tortured me by beating me with sticks on my feet," he recounts.

Then, they started demanding money from my family. First, I paid 5,000 dinars (about 1,000 euros) to be released. Then, they asked me for another 35,000 dinars (about 7,000 euros) to board a boat to Italy. And I was one of the lucky ones.”

Sharmin had never heard of Albania before, the country he ended up in after a long and difficult journey. He boarded a small boat to cross the Channel of Sicily, where he was later rescued by the Italian coast guard and handed over to the military navy.  

Along with others, he boarded the ship Calliope, where they were then selected to be sent to Albania. When he learned of his new destination, along with the others, he began a hunger strike.

Mohammed and the Harsh Reality of Libya

Meanwhile, Mohammed, an Egyptian who worked as a carpenter, tells a similar story. "Some days, I would earn so little that I couldn't even feed my family," he says. Dressed in a blue tracksuit and flip-flops over his socks, he describes the horror they experienced in Libya.

"Those who refused to pay were hung by the arms on hooks as punishment and filmed to scare their families."

According to Toni Ricciardi, a member of parliament for the Democratic Party, the two migrants say that it was the Libyan police themselves who handed them over to criminal gangs.

"In Libya, we were defenseless. Anyone could exploit us and torture us," they said in their testimonies.

Ricciardi, along with his colleagues Rachele Scarpa and Nadia Romeo, listened closely to their testimonies after interviews conducted by the international protection commission. Also, during medical visits to the center, it was found that another migrant was in a serious health condition and had to be transferred to a reception center in Italy. This was the sixth case in a few days to be sent back to Italy after arriving in Albania on the Calliope.

Rights Violations and Legal Uncertainty

"The detainees here are victims of the Libyan torturer Almasri, whom our government has deported to Albania. They do not yet know what awaits them," said MP Scarpa, raising concerns about the lack of experts from the International Organization for Migration, who should have monitored the health conditions of the migrants more closely.

She and human rights organizations are also concerned about the legal protection rights of migrants transferred to Albania. In the coming days, they will testify before the Court of Appeal in Rome via videoconference, but they do not yet know who their lawyers will be and have not had the opportunity to speak with them.

"It is a very serious situation," said lawyer Gennaro Santoro, who requested an urgent meeting to discuss the problems of the right to legal protection for migrants in the Albanian center.

Meanwhile, the health condition of another detainee remains worrying. He has spent the entire day with a high fever and has been kept on IV fluids, while he was later hospitalized due to burns he had suffered earlier.

While migrants continue to recount inhumane conditions in Libyan prisons and the fees they had to pay to gain freedom, the Italian government continues to reject their asylum requests, deeming them “unfounded.”

In Albania, the situation remains uncertain for migrants, who do not yet know what will happen to them. With them are ActionAid activist Francesco Ferri, and representatives of the organizations Arci and Tavolo Asilo e Immigrazione, who continue to follow the case closely and demand respect for their rights. La repubblica