Two Bangladeshis get 20 years in jail in Italy for torturing migrants in Libya

Two Bangladeshi men have been sentenced to 20 years in prison for detaining and torturing migrants in a camp in Libya, reports Arab News.

The court of Palermo city in Italy’s Sicily handed down the verdict while the convicts were Pazurl Sohel and Harun Md, the Riyadh-based English daily said on Tuesday.

Palermo prosecutor Gery Ferrara, who coordinated the police investigation, said several victims accused defendants Pazurl Sohel and Harun Md of holding them captive and beating them for months.

The duo reached Italy on 28 May 2020 in one of many migrant boat landings in Sicily.

Migrants, who had been in the Libyan camp, reportedly identified them. The pair was arrested on 6 July that year.

The victims provided the court with videos filmed on their phones as evidence of the torture they suffered.

Investigators also found photos on Facebook of the defendants with AK47 rifles. Migrants said those weapons were used to hit them repeatedly.

“This verdict comes on the same day that Pope Francis denounced the ‘concentration camps’ in Libya, lamenting ‘how much those who wish to flee suffer at the hands of human traffickers’,” Corrado Lorefice, archbishop of the Sicilian city of Palermo, told Arab News, describing the situation as “inhuman and intolerable.”