Human trafficking

A tale of human traffickers and Libyan slave markets

Hundreds of African refugees are being bought and sold in “slave markets” across Libya every week, a human trafficker has told Al Jazeera, with many of them held for ransom or forced into prostitution and sexual exploitation to pay their captors and smugglers.

Many of them ended up being murdered by their smugglers in the open desert or die from thirst or car accidents in the vast Libyan desert.

A morgue in southern city of Sebha — an entry point for many refugees coming from Africa — is overflowing with corpses, with faulty refrigerator making the situation worse, according to a Libyan health official.

The official in Sebha, 650km south of the capital Tripoli, described horrendous scenes of bodies dumped in threes, fives or more at the gates of the Sebha health facility by smugglers. The refugees who died were never identified and many ended being buried without names or proper graves, he said.