Abo watched his mother being killed by members of a gang known as ‘Asma Boys’ in Sabratha, Libya, his father Mammi said.
Abo and his father, who are migrants from Sierra Leone, have been detained at the Gharyian Center for the past four months after they reported her death to the police.
The migrant from Sierra Leone says his wife was killed by a gang. Mammi said that the ”Asma Boys attacked me and my wife in Sabratha, to pay them 3,000 dinars”. He said gang members started shooting and ”my wife got scared and started running away”.
He said he ran away with his son and hid nearby. ”After everyone left, I went close to my wife and I found her dead, I went to the police station, to report the attack, and the policemen took me to Gharyan”, Mammi said, adding he has been at the center for the past four months.
Mammi also said: ”I called my late wife’s family in Sierra Leone” to tell them ”that their daughter got murdered as we got attacked for money in Libya.” He said family members accused him of trying to sell her for money and of being responsible for the woman’s death, threatening to kill him if he goes back to Sierra Leone. ”So I decided to stay in Libya,” he said, adding that if he would rather ”kill myself slowly” than go back to his country.
A supervisor at the Al Hamra Detention Centre said: ”We brought Mammi and his kid from Sabratha, during the clashes there. He lost his wife in Sabratha. We saved him and his kid, and we brought them to Gharyan , among many others who were wounded”.
The supervisor said he does not think the man ”is ready to go back to his country” because of the trauma he has suffered. He added that ”we have suggested that he goes outside the detention center” but he ”refuses to go out”. ”We have another child who lost both parents in Sabratha, we don’t know what will happen to them”, the supervisor added.
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Three brothers flee Libya to save youngest with leukemia
The three siblings left Libya on a rubber dinghy to seek help for the youngest brother, who has leukemia. They were picked up at sea by the NGO, Proactiva Open Arms.
Three brothers fleeing Libya in search of a hospital to treat the youngest, 14-year-old Allah, who is suffering from leukemia, were rescued at sea on Saturday by the Spanish NGO, Proactiva Open Arms.
Rescuers happy
The rescue of the rubber dinghy, which had only 200 liters of fuel for the entire crossing, led to expressions of joy from the rescue workers. “A happy night in the Mediterranean,” one of the NGO crew members wrote on social media. “Three siblings with a huge amount of love and 200 liters of fuel took to the sea to give one of them, who has leukemia, the hope of reaching a European hospital. True heroes.” There are hopes that the story will end well.
In total, about 280 migrants were rescued off Libya on Saturday in four rescue operations coordinated by the Rome Coast Guard operations center. The migrants were on four dinghies and were rescued by an NGO boat, a fishing boat and a ship used to support activities of some oil platforms.
Dire conditions on Lampedusa
The spotlight has meanwhile returned to the conditions at the hotspot for migrants on Lampedusa. The secretary of the Possibile party, Giuseppe Civati, and an activist from the same group, Stefano Catone, have commented on the latest report drawn up by the Italian Coalition for Freedom and Civil Rights (CILD).
They said that “there are conditions comparable to ones in a concentration camp, neither more nor less. We are asking ourselves where the ministers Minniti and Orlando (interior minister and justice minister) were all these months? We have, inside our own borders, places where people are being held in arbitrary detentions.”
In recent days, the two representatives of the Possibile party also said, “a delegation of lawyers, researchers and mediators involved with situation at the Lampedusa hotspot have documented dire living conditions and systematic human rights violations.” (The three brother traveled on this dinghy. Credit: Proactiva)
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