Libyan authorities have handed over arms dealer Franco Giorgi, who is accused of smuggling weapons from Europe to Libya and has been in Libya’s custody for two years, to Italy.

The merchant ship hijacked by illegal migrants off the coast of Libya has been escorted to Malta by the country’s armed forces.

Illegal migrants have hijacked a merchant ship after rescuing them off the coast of Libya, Italian media reported Wednesday.

Egyptian security experts suspect that a wall being constructed by Libya will be ineffective in stopping terrorists and arms smugglers at Libya’s porous eastern border with Egypt.

After years of civil conflict and political mismanagement, oil-rich Libya is on the verge of economic collapse. It can hardly look after its own financially struggling citizens, let alone its migrant workforce, who have become vulnerable to extortion, kidnapping, and other abuses.

The European Commission has placed Libya on a list of countries which have “strategic deficiencies in their anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing frameworks.”

On the walls of Souq al Khamis migrant detention centre in Khoms, a port city in northwest Libya, warnings of new arrivals are scratched on a grey wall.

Migrants in Libya are facing “unimaginable horrors,” including extrajudicial killings, sexual abuse, torture, slavery and arbitrary detention, a United Nations report said.

Official records have revealed that 50 to 55 tons of Libyan gold – worth 3 billion dollars -have been smuggled to the UAE in recent years, according to the database of foreign commerce authority of the planning ministry of the Presidential Council’s government.

More than 15,000 migrants have returned home from Libya through a voluntary programme since the beginning of 2018, the International Organization for Migration said on Friday.