CAIRO: Providing resettlement options for illegal migrants trying to reach Europe is unacceptable for many Libyans and could further aggravate the civil conflict there, Libyan sources have said.
However, these sources warned that some warring parties may, for political or financial gains, exploit any proposal to provide migrants and refugees with resettlement options.
Ministers and representatives from 13 European and African countries met on Monday in Bern, Switzerland, to discuss ways to deter illegal immigration, especially through Libya; they also called for improved resettlement options for refugees along the migration route.
“The Libyans fear that Europe will seek to solve its migrant crisis at Libya’s expense through taking advantage of the absence of security and authority in many Libyan territories to provide options that range from establishing camps for detaining or sheltering refugees to resettlement, especially in southern Libya,” said a Libyan media source linked to the illegal immigration issue whose name was withheld for security reasons.
In September 2017, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) urgently called for resettlement places for 40,000 of the most vulnerable migrants and refugees stranded in 15 countries along the so-called Central Mediterranean route, which includes Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Mali, Sudan, Egypt, Mauritania, Kenya, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Niger.
In 2016, the UNHCR said that resettlement opportunities were offered to only 6 percent of refugees in the 15 countries, where total needs were estimated to be 277,000.
The representatives of the 13 countries, the Central Mediterranean Contact Group, who held their third meeting this year in Bern, pledged to improve conditions in detention centers in Libya.
“The participants agreed, in close cooperation with Libyan authorities, to develop a system that monitors the situation of migrants and refugees inside detention centers in Libya to improve their conditions and ensure the respect of international human rights and humanitarian standards,” the Swiss Federal Department of Justice and Police said in a statement.
Ministers and representatives of Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Mali, Niger, Chad, Austria, Italy, Germany, France, Malta, Slovenia and Switzerland signed a “declaration of intent” that included securing priority release from detention of vulnerable refugees and migrants, in particular children and torture victims, as well as supporting authorities and organizations that provide humanitarian assistance to migrants and refugees.
The Contact Group held meetings in Rome in March and in Tunisia in July. The Bern meeting followed the UN’s evacuation of 25 vulnerable Eritrean, Ethiopian and Sudanese refugees from Libya to Niger.
Addressing the Contact Group’s meeting in Bern, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, said: “The UNHCR hopes to evacuate another 400 extremely vulnerable refugees from Libya before the end of this year.”
On Tuesday the UN Human Rights chief, Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein, said: “The suffering of migrants detained in Libya is an outrage to the conscience of humanity,” describing the situation as “catastrophic.”
Al-Hussain said that the monitoring system revealed a rapid deterioration of the migrants’ situation in Libya.
From Nov. 1 to 6, UN human rights monitors visited four Department of Combating Illegal Migration facilities (detention centers) in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, where they interviewed detained migrants and refugees.
Al-Hussain attacked Europe’s policy of helping Libyan authorities to intercept people trying to cross the Mediterranean and returning them to prisons as “inhuman.”
“The international community cannot continue to turn a blind eye to the unimaginable horrors endured by migrants in Libya and pretend that the situation can be remedied only by improving conditions in detention,” he said.
Divergent European stances
“There are many people with divergent views on the matter,” said the Swiss justice minister, Simonetta Sommaruga, emphasizing that despite this, all had vowed to improve the conditions of migrants and refugees, especially in Libya.
Libyan writer and journalist Omar Al-Kadi said that the Libyan authorities’ lack of financial resources is the main cause of poor conditions for detained migrants, but said that European approaches to deterring illegal immigration were not united.
He said that while some European countries’ stances were based on their commitment to human rights principles, as in the case of Switzerland, others, especially Italy, were motivated by their desire to rid themselves of the illegal immigration problem.
He said the Italian government had bribed human smugglers in western Libya to stop smuggling refugees and migrants to the Italian coast without caring for their fate or how this policy would aggravate the civil conflict between different parties in Libya.
Several international media reports referred to a secret deal between the Italian interior minister, Marco Minetti, and Ahmed Ahmed Al-Dabbashi (nicknamed Al-Amo), a human trafficking and smuggling leader in Sabratha, 70 km west of Tripoli, which grants him $5 million every three months to stop migrant boats headed for the coast of southern Italy.
Al-Dabbashi’s group, an armed militia of 500 militiamen, controls three main detention camps for illegal migrants in western Libya and has been repeatedly mentioned in UN and EU reports as one of the main human smuggling and trafficking groups in Libya.
The number of illegal immigrants arriving in Italy dropped by almost 80 percent in July and August 2017, but these numbers quickly rocketed after news of the deal sparked a major conflict to gain influence over the city of Sabratha, which ended with the ousting of Al-Dabbashi’s group.
Omar Al-Kadi said that containing smuggling groups could not be achieved without increasing reconciliation efforts inside Libya, as well as re-establishing the state and restoring its authority.
He criticized any further European attempts to take advantage of the chaos in Libya to achieve their interests, saying this would only worsen the situation in Libya and threaten its unity and security as well as the security of the eastern Mediterranean region.
And an anonymous Libyan media source stressed that the situation of illegal migrants inside Libya could not be improved without real efforts to restore the Libyan state and secure its authority over the whole country.
He cast doubt on any European efforts to deter illegal immigration through operating inside Libya, as seen in the recent meeting in Bern. “If nothing is done to improve the political, economic and security situation in the countries exporting migrants in sub-Saharan Africa, any efforts to deter human trafficking in the Libyan desert will be exceedingly absurd,” he said.
The 13 countries committed to facilitate procedures for voluntary return, develop alternatives to illegal immigration and combat human trafficking through pilot projects that provide Africans with legal access to Europe such as scholarships and apprenticeship programs.
According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), about 156,000 migrants and refugees have arrived in Europe by sea since January 2017 (compared to 341,000 in the same period in 2016). Italy has received 73 percent of the migrants since the beginning of 2017, while 3,000 died crossing the sea.
Omar Al-Kadi said that the interim Libyan government, the House of Representatives and the Haftar-led Libyan National Army were indifferent to the outcomes of the Bern meeting. “The illegal immigration problem is more concentrated in western Libya than in eastern Libya,” he said.
“The distance between the eastern coast of Libya and Europe makes it unsuitable for human smuggling activities, unlike the western coast of Libya, which is very close to Italy and Malta,” he said. “The Libyan National Army is not present in the main smuggling areas in western Libya and therefore the army is not concerned with any measures taken in this regard, at least at the current stage.”
The anonymous Libyan media source said: “The interim government and the House of Representatives reject these agreements signed by the Government of National Accord in Tripoli and deem them an attack on Libya’s sovereignty.”
“The two conflicting parties’ presence in southern and southwestern Libya is very weak, and therefore any real effort to control the border in those regions cannot be achieved through Libya’s neighboring countries,” he said, emphasizing that the task would be very difficult.
Concerns over Europe seeking to solve its migrant crisis at Libya’s expense
Concerns over Europe seeking to solve its migrant crisis at Libya’s expense
Iran set to show off captured Israeli F-35 pilots
RIYADH: Iran is set to present images of captured Israeli F-35 pilots “soon,” according to the Tehran Times.
The Iranians on Friday said they had captured two Israeli fighter jet pilots, one of them a woman.
The Israelis have not confirm they had lost any of its pilots after carrying out a surprise attack on Iran on Friday morning.
The two countries militaries have been engaged in missile and drone attacks since then, prompting fears the confrontation could spiral out of control and lead to a major regional conflict.
What Israel’s bombing of Iran’s state broadcaster says about its targeting of journalists
- Israeli forces struck Iran’s state broadcaster IRIB on Monday, killing two staff and injuring others during a live broadcast
- Press freedom advocates say the Tehran strike echoes Israel’s pattern of targeting media in Gaza and the West Bank
LONDON: In what press freedom groups say is only the latest in a string of attacks on media workers, the Israeli military on Monday struck the headquarters of the state-owned Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting network in Tehran.
The attack, which interrupted a live broadcast, killed at least two members of staff — news editor Nima Rajabpour and secretariat worker Masoumeh Azimi — and injured several others, according to state-affiliated media.
In footage widely shared online, Sahar Emami, an anchor for the Islamic Republic of Iran News Network, was seen fleeing the studio as the screen behind her filled with smoke. Moments earlier, she had told viewers: “You hear the sound of the aggressor attacking the truth.”
The strike destroyed the building — known as the Glass Building — which burned through the night. Israel immediately claimed responsibility.
Defense Minister Israel Katz had issued a warning less than an hour earlier, calling IRIB a “propaganda and incitement megaphone,” urging up to 330,000 nearby residents to evacuate.
The attack drew swift condemnation from Iranian officials. Esmaeil Baqaei, spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, called it “a wicked act of war crime,” urging the international community to demand justice from Israel for its attack on the media.
NUMBER
70%
Israel is responsible for the majority of journalist killings globally in 2024, the highest number by a single country in one year since the Committee to Protect Journalists began documenting this data in 1992.
Source: CPJ
“The world is watching,” Baqaei wrote on X. “Israeli regime is the biggest enemy of truth and is the No#1 killer of journalists and media people.”
Over the past week, the long-running shadow war between Israel and Iran has escalated dramatically. On Friday, Israel launched a series of airstrikes on Iranian nuclear and military facilities, including the Natanz enrichment site.
With the stated aim of preventing Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon, the strikes caused significant damage to the country’s nuclear infrastructure and military command structure, with multiple high-ranking commanders killed.
Iran has retaliated with missile barrages targeting Israeli cities and military bases. Civilian casualties have mounted on both sides, and major cities like Tehran and Tel Aviv have experienced widespread panic and disruption.
The Israeli attack on IRIB shows media workers are not exempt from the violence.
Sara Qudah, regional director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said she was “appalled by Israel’s attack on Iran’s state television channel,” noting that the lack of international censure “has emboldened it to target media elsewhere in the region.”
Loreley Hahn Herrera, lecturer in global media and digital cultures at SOAS University of London, echoed this view.
“The exceptional status through which Western powers have historically shielded Israel has allowed it to systematically commit international law and human rights violations without ever being held accountable or suffer any legal, financial, military or diplomatic repercussions,” she told Arab News.
“This has indeed emboldened Israel to attack not only Palestine and Iran. In the last months, Israel has broken the ceasefire in Lebanon, bombed Yemen, and Syria as well.”
Israel’s treatment of media workers in combat zones has long been documented by press freedom organizations. Despite repeated calls for accountability, Israel has consistently evaded consequences.
“Israel has a sophisticated political communication strategy which rests on its hasbara (propaganda) that has worked hand in hand with its material strategies to control the public spaces in the West through repeating narratives about victimhood and its right to defend itself,” Dina Matar, professor of political communication and Arab media at SOAS, told Arab News.
Monday’s strike in Tehran closely mirrors Israel’s record in Gaza and the West Bank since Oct. 7, 2023. Under the banner of “eliminating terrorists,” Israel has killed at least 183 journalists in Palestine and Lebanon, according to CPJ. Others put the figure closer to 220.
A separate report published in April by the Costs of War project at Brown University described the Gaza conflict as “the worst ever for journalists.”
Titled “News Graveyards: How Dangers to War Reporters Endanger the World,” the study concluded that more journalists have been killed in Gaza than in all major US wars combined.
The report was swiftly attacked by Israeli nationalists, who dismissed it as “garbage” and factually flawed for not linking the journalists killed to militant activity.
“There is no policy of targeting journalists,” a senior Israeli officer said last year, attributing the deaths to the scale and intensity of the bombardment.
But Herrera disagrees.
“Israel is not only targeting journalists, it is targeting the families of the journalists as a strategy to deter their coverage and punish them for reporting the war crimes Israel commits on a daily basis in occupied Palestine,” she said.
Herrera cited several examples where Israel appeared to punish journalists by targeting their families. One case was that of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh, who was broadcasting live when he learned that his wife, daughter, son, and grandchild had been killed in an Israeli airstrike in October 2023.
A more recent case involved photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, who was killed alongside several family members. Both attacks, Israel claimed, were aimed at Hamas operatives, but critics say they reflect a broader strategy of silencing coverage through collective punishment.
Yet accusations of Israel’s targeting of journalists precede the last 20 months.
“Israel has a long and documented history of targeting Palestinian journalists,” said Matar, pointing to the 1972 assassination of writer Ghassan Kanafani in Beirut.
A prominent Palestinian author and militant, Kanafani was considered to be a leading novelist of his generation and one of the Arab world’s leading Palestinian writers.
He was killed along with his 17-year-old niece, Lamees, by an explosive device planted in his car by Mossad, in one of the first known extrajudicial killings for which the Israeli spy agency ever claimed responsibility.
More recently, in May 2022, Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot dead by an Israeli soldier during a raid in Jenin, despite wearing a press vest. Initial Israeli claims blaming Palestinian fire were quickly disproven by independent investigations and the UN.
A 2025 documentary identified the suspected shooter, but no one has been held accountable.
Foreign media workers have also been killed. In 2014, Italian journalist Simone Camilli and his Palestinian colleague Ali Shehda Abu Afash died when an unexploded Israeli bomb detonated while they were reporting in Gaza.
In 2003, Welsh documentarian James Miller was fatally shot by Israeli forces while filming in Rafah.
A year earlier, Italian photojournalist Raffaele Ciriello — on assignment for Corriere della Sera — was shot dead by Israeli gunfire in Ramallah during the Second Intifada, becoming the first foreign journalist killed in that conflict.
No one has been held accountable in any of these cases.
“The reason behind Israel’s targeting and killing of journalists is to send a clear message and instill fear of reporting Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and the West Bank, as it can carry the consequence of death and/or injury,” said Herrera, who noted Israel’s refusal to allow international media into Gaza as part of a wider strategy to monopolize the narrative.
“This is an attempt to minimize or flat out stop any negative coverage of Israeli actions in Gaza and the rest of the occupied territories,” she said. “Israel does not want international media, and particularly Western media, to cover their genocide campaign and their ongoing and systematic war crimes … and push further the delegitimization of Israel.”
While Israel has so far refused to grant broader media access to the enclave, Western news organizations and human rights groups have attempted to push back against the Israeli narrative, arguing that affiliation with outlets like Al-Aqsa TV or Iran’s state broadcaster IRIB does not justify extrajudicial killings.
“News outlets, even propagandist ones, are not legitimate military targets,” the Freedom of the Press Foundation said in a statement on Monday. “Bombing a studio during a live broadcast will not impede Iran’s nuclear program.”
As the conflict with Iran escalates, incidents like Monday’s bombing are likely to face growing scrutiny. For many observers, Israel’s actions are becoming increasingly indefensible, and international tolerance for such attacks may be nearing its limit.
“The international community has played an important role in allowing Israel to act in this manner,” said Herrera.
“Since its establishment in 1948, and even before that though the Balfour Declaration in 1917, the West has protected Israel in the international relations arena.
“The best example of this is the use of the US veto in the UN Security Council or the ever-present declarations that Israel ‘has a right to defend itself’ by European and American political leadership.
“Until the international community effectively implements sanctions, stops funding and arming Israel, we will only continue to witness Israel’s brazen violations of international and human rights law.
“We cannot expect Israel to self-regulate because Israel is not a democracy. Its political and legal systems are subservient to the Zionist ideology of colonization and racial supremacy, and will act to satisfy these aims.”
UAE warns against ‘miscalculated actions’ in Israeli-Iranian conflict, calls for immediate ceasefire
UAE warns against ‘miscalculated actions’ in Israeli-Iranian conflict, calls for immediate ceasefire
- Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan says Emirati leadership is dedicated to promotion of stability, prosperity and justice
- He highlights ‘the risks of reckless and miscalculated actions that could extend beyond the borders’ of Israel and Iran
LONDON: As military exchanges between Israel and Iran continued on Tuesday for a fifth consecutive day, the UAE’s minister of foreign affairs, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, warned of the wider threat posed by the continuing conflict and called for an immediate ceasefire.
“There is no alternative to political and diplomatic solutions,” he said, calling on the UN and its Security Council to intervene and halt the escalating violence.
He also highlighted “the risks of reckless and miscalculated actions that could extend beyond the borders” of Israel and Iran, the Emirates News Agency reported.
The UAE believes “a diplomatic approach is urgently required to lead both parties toward deescalation, end hostilities, and prevent the situation from spiraling into grave and far-reaching consequences,” he added.
The goal of international diplomacy, he said, must be to immediately halt hostilities, prevent the conflict from spiraling out of control, and mitigate its effects on global peace and security.
The UAE condemned the Israeli airstrikes on Iran that began on Friday, which have targeted nuclear sites, military leaders, intelligence chiefs and atomic scientists. Iran has responded by firing ballistic missiles at Israeli towns and cities along the Mediterranean, including Tel Aviv, Rishon LeZion and Haifa.
Sheikh Abdullah said the Emirati leadership is dedicated to the promotion of stability, prosperity and justice, and he stressed the urgent need for wisdom in a region long embroiled in conflicts.
“The UAE believes that promoting dialogue, adhering to international law and respecting the sovereignty of states are essential principles for resolving the current crises,” he added.
“The UAE calls on the United Nations and the Security Council to fully uphold their responsibilities by preventing further escalation, and taking urgent and necessary measures to achieve a ceasefire and reinforce international peace and security.”
At least 60 people feared missing in two deadly shipwrecks off Libya, IOM says
- IOM says shipwrecks happened off the Libyan coast
CAIRO: At least 60 people were feared missing at sea after two deadly shipwrecks off the coast of Libya in recent days, the International Organization for Migration said on Tuesday.
Russia says Israel attacks on Iran are illegal, notes Iran’s commitment to NPT
- The statement said Moscow was waiting for the International Atomic Energy Agency to provide “unvarnished” assessments of the damage caused to Iranian nuclear facilities by Israeli attacks
MOSCOW: Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday denounced continued Israeli attacks on Iran as illegal and said a solution to the conflict over Tehran’s nuclear program could only be found through diplomacy.
A ministry statement posted on Telegram noted Iran’s “clear statements” on its commitment to adhere to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and its willingness to meet with US representatives.
The statement also said Moscow was waiting for the International Atomic Energy Agency to provide “unvarnished” assessments of the damage caused to Iranian nuclear facilities by Israeli attacks.
