Libyan security forces saved on Thursday eight Egyptians from an ominous fate that they were about to face at the hands of human traffickers in the city of Bani Walid ((180 kilometers towards to southwest).
Gangs based in Bani Walid, a transit point on the road to the western coast, are abducting, trafficking, and smuggling migrants to Europe.
The security directorate in Bani Walid said that police officers succeed eight Egyptian individuals “after they had been abducting on the main road between Qurayyat to Sheirf. The directorate also explained how it freed them from the human traffickers.
Last June, 23 Egyptian workers were kidnapped in the city of Tarhuna (southeast of the capital, Tripoli), and a video emerged of them being tortured, but the Ministry of Interior of the “accord” government managed to repatriate them to Egypt after their captors were arrested. The directorate revealed that “the eight kidnapped individuals were sold to a human trafficker in Bani Walid, who in turn tortured them and financially extorted their families to pay a ransom estimated at 30 thousand dinars per person (a dollar is 6.58 dinars in the parallel market), but the police intervened in time after learning of the kidnapping, and they arrested those involved in this crime and freed the kidnapped.
A source in the Bani Walid Security Directorate told Asharq Al-Awsat that the police are tracking those who have not yet been caught to bring them to justice, adding that young Egyptians - most of whom are in their 30s - were transferred to the criminal directorate’s investigation department to complete the legal procedures before being repatriated to Egypt.
