A new Libyan force emerges, accused of abusing migrants

CAIRO (AP) — The Moroccan man had been stopped before at sea in his multiple attempts to cross the Mediterranean from Libya to Europe. But his most recent time was different. The Libyan force that intercepted the boat full of some 50 migrants was more brutal.

The armed men beat and humiliated the migrants, he recalled. They were then taken to a detention facility where for months and weeks they were severely beaten, abused and tortured. He said he was repeatedly beaten with rifle butts and whipped with rubber hoses.

Badges on their uniform showed the affiliation of the gunmen, he said: the Stabilization Support Authority.

The SSA, an umbrella group of militias, has risen to become one of the main forces carrying out Libya’s European Union-aided effort to stop migrants from crossing to European shores. Though migrants have long been brutalized in Libya, rights groups and former detainees say the abuse is taking on a more organized and dangerous nature under this feared new body. And officials say it also is benefiting from EU support.

The SSA has come to rival in strength the official anti-migrant agencies like the coast guard and navy. But unlike them, it reports directly to Libya’s Tripoli-based presidential council and is not subject to EU and U.N. scrutiny intended to prevent rights abuses.

More than a dozen migrants interviewed by the Associated Press told of how they were brutalized by the SSA while being held in its detention facility in the town of Maya on Tripoli’s western outskirts. The migrants, fearing retaliation, spoke on condition of anonymity or that they be identified only by their first names. They were all trying to get out of Libya.

“All I want is to leave this hell,” said Rabei, a 32-year-old Egyptian from a Nile Delta province, describing his...