"They sell everyone, there’s no distinction" - State Trafficking in Tunisia

In this article, Rachel Marem Coly, provides a summary and contextualization to the recently published “State Trafficking” Report, that offers rare and valuable insights into Tunisia’s deportation practices which were ramped up dramatically with mass deportations to the desert regions as of mid-2023. Since they are often conducted out of public view in restricted military zones, the report represents the most comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the issue to date, tracing the logic and structure behind these expulsions through the identification of five key stages.

Introduction & Context

Once celebrated as the only country to emerge from the Arab Spring as a democracy, Tunisia has increasingly reverted to an autocracy in recent years. In 2022, the incumbent President Kais Saied dissolved parliament and had the constitution rewritten in his favour, massively restricting or even suspending the rights of democratic and legislative institutions. By now Saied has also secured control over the judicial system, paving the way for arbitrary arrests and imprisonment. Affected by the increasing restrictions on fundamental and human rights are all those who question Saied's government. According to Amnesty International: “Many political opposition leaders and government critics are in arbitrary detention, presidential candidates face restrictions and prosecutions, many journalists and commentators have been sentenced to imprisonment, and civil society is under threat of further repression.”

Furthermore, the country’s slide into autocracy manifests itself in the fact that migrants and refugees residing in Tunisia are increasingly subjected to institutionalised violence. The violence is usually racially motivated, targeting Black people from sub-Saharan Africa. Raids on migrants’ and refugees’ camps, arbitrary police crackdowns and – especially alarming - mass expulsions to the desert regions at the borders with Libya and Algeria have become disturbingly routine. A newly published report named “State trafficking” now reveals another cruel dimension of the systematic violence towards migrants and refugees in Tunisia: People deported to Tunisia’s border regions are being sold by Tunisian police and military forces to Libyan actors. This finding outlines a troubling interconnection between Tunisian deportation infrastructure and the Libyan kidnapping and ransom economy through state crimes of human trafficking.

The report was published in January 2025 by an international research team named Researchers X with support from ASGI, Border Forensics and On Borders. It is based on 30 testimonies from people on the move, who became victims of expulsions to Libya carried out by the Tunisian police and military forces between June 2023 and November 2024. The report traces the logic and structure behind these expulsions through the identification of five key stages: the arrest of migrants in Tunisia, their transportation to the Tunisian Libyan border, detention camps on the Tunisian side of the border, forced movement and sale of migrants to Libyan armed forces and militias and the detention of migrants in Libyan prisons. Furthermore, the report reconstructs locations of places where detention and sale took place.

The Five Stages

1. Capture Operations

The first stage in the cycle of violence represents the arrest in Tunisia. The capture operations happen in all kinds of situations and places: “at sea, in the workplace, in front of banks and money transfer agencies, in the streets, at people’s houses, within the prison grounds, and during raids”. Driven by racial profiling, only Black people are targeted, resulting in the arrest of individuals from a wide range of backgrounds and circumstances— ranging from students to workers, people with Tunisian passports to individuals with no documents at all. During the capture operations the people are subjected to physical or sexual violence and their money or personal identity documents are often seized. No legal process is followed. When people are intercepted at sea the Tunisian Coast Guard sometimes causes shipwrecks or threatens to do so. In addition, people report receiving misleading information during capture operations, with security guards pretending to help them.

It was 29 July 2024. There were 47 of us. We were out at sea for several days. […] On 3 August, the Garde Nationale caught us. They behaved atrociously, they even tried to capsize our boat. Then they took us to the port of Sfax. (...) There we found about fifty more people. They beat up those who weren't wounded and gave those who were wounded minimal assistance. They took those who were seriously wounded away. We remained under the sun, on the tarmac, until night came. Then they loaded us onto buses.

The police started destroying the places where black people slept in the olive groves and started hunting people down. (...) They gassed us, arrested us, put us on a bus, and took us to a big camp in Sfax. There were many of us, of all nationalities, […] many women, many children. That's where it all started. It was 17 October 2023. The chiefs came, they were all in uniform, and they gave directions that the buses had to follow[…] They didn't tell us anything about where we were going.

2. The Busses

After being arrested, people are forced onto busses heading to the border with Libya or Algeria, often without receiving any information about their fate. These transfers are organized by the Garde National, whose personnel is present on the buses and vehicles of police corps escort the convoy. The fact that the transfers mostly take place at night, people are asked to lower their heads when bused drive through populated areas and that the present officers are masked, suggests a deliberate effort to conduct the operations in secrecy. On the busses, requests for food, care, or physiological needs are met with beatings, searches turn into sexual harassment and injured people receive no treatment. Moreover, the interviewed people report about the systematic use of exemplary violence in order to instil terror and prevent forms of resistance. This form of physical and psychological violence has reportedly become more intense as reaction to escape and revolt attempts and people trying to document and denounce what is happening. One witness even mentioned the use of psychopharmacological drugs mixed with food to deter physical resistance.

There were a lot of people on the bus, at least 100. […] Along the way, two people asked the policemen where we were going, 'we don't want to go to Libya'. They stopped the bus and the policemen went around looking for them. They took them outside and put them on the ground. There were soldiers there, too, it was like an escort, front and back. How they beat those two people! In front of everyone. No one had the courage to ask where we were going anymore (...) We felt that we no longer had any rights, no rights to anything.

3. Detention Camps at the Border: Tunisian Side

Upon arrival in the border regions to Libya, witnesses report that the people are usually handed over to Tunisian military corps, which is a key actor operating in the area. Subsequently, the people pass through a network of interconnected detention camps, getting progressively closer to the Libyan border. The procedure in the different camps follow a ritualised pattern, beginning with searches, during which potentially remaining personal belongings are taken from the arrested people – ensuring they are completely shielded from the outside world. In the camps, the lack of food and care is described as almost total. Furthermore, systematic, generalised and repeated violence and torture are omnipresent . There is evidence indicating the use of iron bars, baton and taser guns as well as dogs and shots fired into the air aiming to threaten prisoners. Survivors report of fellow human beings who succumbed to the injuries caused by violence and torture and the existence of mass graves in vicinity of the military camps. Many people describe a “cage” as the last place where they were held in Tunisa before crossing to Libya.

When we arrived, we realised we were between Tunisia and Libya. There, soldiers were waiting for us at the border in the first camp. They made us stand in line. They take off your handcuffs, hit you with sticks, and make you go into the camp. […] In the evening, they let us out and put us in a cage in the desert. There were more than a hundred of us. They locked us in, and we did at least five days in the cage. Without food, they made us drink the salt water from the toilets they gave us. […] We lost two brothers who died of hunger and thirst. The Tunisian soldiers loaded them up and I don't know where they took them.

4. Human Trafficking

Finally, the passage through the prison network culminates in a shocking reality: the imprisoned people are sold to Libyan militias. Witnesses report being taking right to the border, where they are forced to line up. Then, the selling and buying of people takes places. It’s always groups, consisting of 40 to 150 people that are being sold. No one is spared: men, women (also pregnant), couples, children, and minors become victims. Selling prices range from 40 and 300 Tunisian dinars (12 to 90 euros) per person, but sometimes people are even exchanged for hashish, and fuel. Price negotiations either take place on the phone or are conducted via visits from Libyan actors of the Tunisian army facilities – often before the eyes of the people who are being sold. The Libyan “buyers” vary: At times they consist of solely uniformed personnel in official vehicles, other times they represent mixed groups of uniformed und ununiformed yet armed personnel or they are formed entirely by militia members without uniforms.

In the Tunisian military camp at the Libyan border, there were about 50 of us. At night, they called the Libyans and talked for a long time (...) then they took us right to the border. They made an exchange, they sold us. I saw the money that the Libyans gave to the Tunisians and the Tunisians handed us over to them. There were women, there were children. They sell everyone, there’s no distinction.

When I say ‘sale’, I really mean buying and selling, like for objects, they sold us like slaves. If we raised our heads, they’d beat us. We didn't understand, because they spoke Arabic, but there were Sudanese people in the group who translated: they sold the men for 100 dinars and the women for 300 dinars, they were exchanging money. They were armed.

5. Detention Camps: Libyan Side

The victims of the human trafficking are mostly brought to the Libyan Al Assah prison, which is controlled by the Libyan Border Guard. According to the UN Human Rights Council this prison represents one of the epicentres of human rights violations. Moreover, Al Assah is further described as the gateway to the Libyan prison network – widely known to be a highly violent system of exploitation. After entering the prison, detainees are once again separated. Here, too, people’s skin colour and their “economic value” decide over their fate. Those unable to pay ransoms face torture, threats, and violence. The testimonies further reveal that the prisoners are forced to inflict violence on other detainees or bury bodies of deceased prisoners in mass graves. As other Libyan detention facilities, Al Assah also functions as a forced labour market: Imprisoned people are sold to locals to do little daytime jobs. When people are freed from the prisons, they are often taken to the nearby city Zwara. Although released, the allegedly free people are far from being safe, as they now face the risk of falling deeper into the Libyan migrant kidnapping and detention industry.

They loaded us onto cars and took us to a prison in the desert. Prison in Libya is hell, it's hell. You have to be really strong. In the morning, they beat you and give you phones to call your parents. The water to drink is salty. There are no toilets. In the prison, the IOM always came. They knew what was going on in the prison. They knew about all the trafficking. But there’s nothing they can do. [...] Every week, at least 120 people arrived at the prison from Tunisia. The Libyan prison is at the border, we call it Al Assah. Those who can't pay to get out of that prison, after a month or two months, get transferred to another prison.

EU Complicity

The blatant human rights violations through arbitrary arrests, expulsions, detentions and the particularly devastating practice of human sale is linked to the externalization policies of the EU and its member states. Both Libya and Tunisia represent key cooperation partners for the EU in the field of migration, which have for years benefited from EU funding aimed at preventing people from reaching European shores. The EU, and particularly Italy, support interceptions of people on the move by both the Tunisian and the so-called Libyan Coast Guard. With a Memorandum of Understanding, established in July 2023, a total amount of 105 Mio. Euro was allocated to Tunisia for the purpose of border management and Germany is known to cooperate with the Tunisian police. In the report it is further mentioned that the Headquarter of the Libyan Border Guard, which manages the Al Assah prison is supported through the EU program EUBAM. EUBAM is consolidating its role in Libya, as was recently revelead by leaked EU-documents published by migration-control.info.

Although the situation for migrants and refugees in Tunisia continues to deteriorate – as shown by recent mass evictions of refugee camps – the EU has so far made no effort to end its cooperation with the country. On the contrary, it appears to be aiming for a deepening of the partnership. This is evident, for example, in Commission President von der Leyen’s announcement in mid-April that Tunisia would be added to the list of so-called safe countries of origin. Asylum seekers arriving in the EU from Tunisia could therefore face rejection of their applications and potentially receive return orders under the new EU regulations. Meanwhile, Frontex proudly announces the decline in the number of refugees arriving in Europe. Yet reports like the one by State Trafficking once again make it abundantly clear that the current European migration policy functions only at the expense of abuse, exploitation and disenfranchisement of those fleeing.

Consequently, in light of the report's findings, the EU’s continued support for Tunisia and Libya reflects, at best, negligent ignorance – and at worst, deliberate cruelty. In any case, these developments highlight a disturbing trend: in its pursuit to curb migration, the EU appears willing to abandon every principle of human rights law. Europes promise of human rights has already for long applied only to those who can call themselves EU citizens. For all those who dare to seek protection in Europe, the EU and its member states shows themselves willing to disregard and violate human rights in every form.