According to information received by UNSMIL, armed groups, smugglers and traffickers, private employers, police, the Libyan Coast Guard, and DCIM staff have brought migrants into DCIM detention centres, with no formal registration, no legal process, and no access to lawyers or judicial authorities. Usually their documents and belongings are confiscated. Migrants have been found in detention while still in possession of required documents such as work permits, passports, and visas. Migrants are held indefinitely for periods varying from days to months. The detention of migrants under these circumstances is arbitrary, contravening both Libyan national law and international human rights standards. Migrants are also held in unofficial places of detention while transiting through Libya, including in detention centres run by armed groups and “connection houses” – places where smugglers and traffickers hold migrants during transit before transfer onto the next location. Migrants are also held in farms, warehouses, houses and apartments secured by smugglers, traffickers and armed groups. According to information received by UNSMIL, on 19 October, armed men abducted a man from Bangladesh along with a number of other Bangladeshi nationals before they reached passport control at Mitiga international airport in Tripoli before they reached passport control. According to his account, he was held in a warehouse for 12 days where he was beaten and subjected to other forms of ill-treatment. He was released after a payment of 5,000 Libyan Dinars was made by his family through a money transfer. He said there were around 300 people of different nationalities, the majority from Bangladesh, held with him in the warehouse. Conditions of detention in DCIM centres are generally inhuman, falling far short of international human rights standards. Many of the centres are warehouses or other structures unfit to hold people, characterized by severe overcrowding, lack of light, and very little ventilation. In a number of centres, the overcrowding and a lack of sanitation facilities has led to the spread of infectious diseases, including scabies and chickenpox. Acute diarrhea and respiratory tract infections are common and directly related to the living conditions. Infestation by lice and fleas are often observed. In one centre, more than 200 men were held in a room that could reasonably hold less than 40. Due to lack of access to toilets, detainees were forced to openly defecate and urinate in their cells. Sometimes detainees used cups or other containers for such purpose and waited for an opportunity to empty them outside, or threw urine against walls that are heated by the sun thus facilitating the evaporation of the urine. Malnutrition is widespread due to the lack of adequate food. Credible reports received by UNSMIL indicated that in some centres, approximately fifty per cent of the detainees were found to be suffering from malnutrition, with ten per cent of male adult detainees suffering acute malnutrition. Information received by UNSMIL indicated that the average number of calories provided to migrants on daily basis recently in detention centres in Tripoli is 35 per cent of the quantity actually required for an adult male. The levels of malnutrition increase with the length of stay in the centres. Migrants have described the water that they receive as salty, dirty, and undrinkable. In some centres, for example the DCIM detention centre in Al-Fallah, a lack of 15

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