The Tripoli Criminal Court on Friday sentenced a member of a criminal network to 30 years in prison after convicting him of human trafficking and of organizing the smuggling of migrants by sea.
The Office of the Attorney General said the court initiated criminal charges against an individual actively involved in an organized criminal group engaged in human trafficking and the unlawful facilitation of migrant smuggling operations across the Mediterranean.
The defendant was also fined 90,000 Libyan dinars.
Investigations revealed that members of the network deliberately arranged irregular sea crossings and subjected some migrants to severe abuses and that several victims were deprived of their liberty and held in coercive conditions amounting to practices akin to slavery.
In a related development, the International Organization for Migration said at least 7,667 people died or went missing on migration routes worldwide in 2025.
The figures underscore the continued global scale of the crisis faced by people on the move, the UN agency said, calling for the dismantling of smuggling networks that exploit migrants and put lives at risk.
“The continued loss of life on migration routes is a global failure we cannot accept as normal,” said IOM Director General Amy Pope.
“These deaths are not inevitable. When safe pathways are out of reach, people are forced into dangerous journeys and into the hands of smugglers and traffickers,” Pope noted.
The UN agency said sea crossings remained among the deadliest routes. In 2025, at least 2,185 people died or went missing in the Mediterranean, and at least 1,500 additional people were reported missing at sea but could not be verified due to limited access to search-and-rescue information.
Though evidence on these “invisible shipwrecks” is scarce, IOM said at least 270 human remains washed ashore on Mediterranean coasts in 2025 without being linked to known shipwrecks, and three vessels carrying the remains of 42 people were later found drifting to Brazil and the Caribbean after attempting the Canary Islands crossing.
This concerning trend continues into 2026.
According to the UN agency, the Mediterranean is seeing an unprecedented number of migrant deaths in the first two months of 2026, with 606 recorded as of 24 February.
Over the same timeframe, arrivals in Italy decreased from 6,358 to 2,465 (a 61% decrease).
Yet, it said, there are reports of hundreds more missing at sea that cannot yet be verified. In the last two weeks alone, 23 human remains have been washed up on southern Italian and Libyan coasts.
IOM affirmed that the persistence of these deaths reflects the growing reach of trafficking and migrant smuggling networks that continue to exploit desperation along migration routes, exposing people to violence, abuse, and life-threatening journeys.
It called on governments and partners to urgently scale up coordinated search-and-rescue operations to prevent further loss of life, strengthen international cooperation to dismantle criminal networks, and expand safe and regular migration pathways so people are not forced into the hands of smugglers.
Meanwhile, the Interior Ministry of the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity (GNU) announced on Friday the deportation of a group of illegal Nigerian migrants through Mitiga International Airport, as part of the national program to address illegal migration.
Also, the Anti-Migration Service (Wahat Branch) in Libya said it detained 38 Sudanese migrants for illegal entry and initiated their transfer to the Ajdabiya shelter center, in line with legal and humanitarian procedures.
