Yesterday 93 people disembarked in Pozzallo ( 86 of them were from Eritrea and 7 from other sub –Saharan countries. Among these, there were 12 minors and 18 women one of whom was five-month pregnant.
It has been reported that people from Eritrea have been hold in a big warehouse, where more than thousand people were forced to live in desperate inhuman conditions and were tortured and then, more than two hundred were gathered at a connection area, before the dramatic trip by sea. The testimonies said had been spent longer than one month and half in a semi-open place where, as a 23-year old woman says, “ we had to dig holes in the ground to find shelter …. Some people died there, among us and excrements”, before embarking in a precarious vessel. A trip payed about $1,500 to cross the sea.
In addition, other two out of seven migrants coming from sub- Saharan Africa reported to have been detained in informal and formal prisons in Libya. A 26-year-old from Gambia said to have been imprisoned for more than one month in Ossama prison: “ when The U.N aid arrived the Libyans threw away the sticks and torture tools … for some days it went well”
A lot of people were found in a state of weakness and malnutrition, in some cases severe physical depletion due to the inhumane conditions of the detention experienced in Libya. Five people were taken to hospital. Among them a 22-year-old guy sadly died last night due to cachexia at the hospital in Modica
Witnessed by Medu Team at the Pozzallo Hotspot on the 12th of March 2018