(Corrects second paragraph to say only one of the defendants was sentenced in absentia, not four)
TRIPOLI, April 28 (Reuters) – Libya’s Tripoli Criminal Court on Tuesday convicted four members of “a criminal gang” involved in human trafficking, abductions for ransom and torture, with sentences up to 22 years, the attorney general’s office said on its Facebook page.
The attorney general’s office did not disclose the names of the four defendants, who were sentenced to between 12 and 22 years in prison. One of the defendants was sentenced in absentia.
Libya has become a transit route for migrants fleeing conflict and poverty to Europe via dangerous routes across the desert and over the Mediterranean since the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi in a NATO-backed uprising in 2011.
Charges against the four defendants including smuggling illegal migrants from Zuwara, a coastal city west of Tripoli, the attorney general’s office said.
The gang also kidnapped migrants, forcing their families to pay ransom by sending them “videos documenting the victims’ torture”, it added.
At least 17 bodies believed to be migrants were recovered by a medical service centre two weeks ago from the shores of Zuwara.
On Monday, the Public Prosecutor’s Office ordered the arrest of “a criminal gang” that sent migrants from the eastern Libyan city of Tobruk to the northern Mediterranean on a dilapidated and unsafe boat that capsized and resulted in the death of 38 Sudanese, Egyptian, and Ethiopian nationals.
In November, several states including Britain, Spain, Norway and Sierra Leone urged Libya at a U.N. meeting in Geneva to close detention centres where rights groups say migrants and refugees have been tortured, abused and sometimes killed.
(Reporting by Ahmed Elumami and Ayman al-Warfalli; writing by Ahmed Elumami; editing by Lincoln Feast)
