MIGRANTS and refugees heading to Europe are “systematically subjected to a litany of abuses” from the moment they enter Libya, the UN warned today.

A fact-finding report commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council and published today states that “the violence that has plagued Libya since 2011, and which has continued almost unabated since 2016, has enabled the commission of serious violations, abuses and crimes, including crimes against humanity and war crimes, against the most vulnerable.”

The report also warned that the EU-supported Libyan coastguards ensure that the people they intercept in the Mediterranean are returned to detention centres where “they face intolerable conditions calculated to cause suffering and the desire to utilise any means of escape — including by paying large sums of money to militias, criminal gangs, traffickers and smugglers who have links to the state and profit from this practice.”