Libyan people smuggler Abdel-Rahman Milad who worked for EU-backed navy is assassinated in Tripoli

One of Libya’s most notorious people smugglers, who was also a senior officer in the country’s EU-funded coast guard, has been assassinated in a “mafia-style” ambush.

Abdel-Rahman Milad, who was the head of a coast guard unit in the western town of Zawiya, one of the main embarkation points for asylum seekers hoping to reach Italy, was shot dead on Sunday in Tripoli by gunmen who sprayed his Toyota Land Cruiser with bullets.

Milad, the father of a two-year-old boy, was said to have made a fortune exploiting desperate migrants who arrive in Libya from sub-Saharan Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere hoping to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.

The vast majority head for Italy, with large numbers arriving on the tiny southern island of Lampedusa.

Milad was also the head of Libya’s naval academy and a senior commander in the coast guard, which for years has been trained and financed by the EU as part of efforts to block irregular migration from north Africa.

There have long been accusations by migrant NGOs and human rights groups that the Libyan coast guard is corrupt, brutal and complicit in the exploitation of the tens of thousands of migrants who try to reach Italy each year.

In 2017, Milad was part of a Libyan delegation that came to Italy as guests of the interior ministry. They reportedly met government officials, officers from the Italian coast guard and members of the Red Cross.

Milad was nicknamed Bidja or Bija, a reference to his love of football and his admiration for the Italian player Roberto Baggio.

In June 2018, the Security Council imposed sanctions on Milad and five other leaders of criminal networks.

Milad was described as the head of a coast guard unit in Zawiya “that is consistently linked with violence against migrants and other human smugglers” from rival gangs.

UN experts said that he and other coast guard members were “directly involved in the sinking of migrant boats using firearms. Several witnesses in criminal investigations have said they were picked up at sea by armed men on a coast guard ship called Tallil (used by Milad) and taken to the al-Nasr detention centre, where they are reportedly held in brutal conditions and subjected to beatings.”

The unprecedented sanctions followed outrage a few months before when CNN aired footage showing the auctioning of male migrants as slaves.

It showed young men from sub-Saharan countries including Niger being sold off to buyers for about $400 each at undisclosed locations in Libya.

Milad had denied any links to human smuggling and said traffickers wear uniforms that are very similar to those of the coast guard.

He was sent to prison for about six months in October 2020 for human trafficking and fuel smuggling.

‘Empire out of human suffering’

“He built an empire out of human suffering and European policies made that possible,” said Anas El Gomati, director of the Sadeq Institute, a public policy think tank in Libya.

“He transformed rescues into ransom: the most vulnerable people were intercepted in the Mediterranean and then brought back to Libya where they suffered extortion in detention centres,” he told La Repubblica newspaper. 

“It was a mafia-style execution,” Nancy Porsia, an Italian journalist who had investigated Milad’s trafficking activities, wrote on X. “His threats against me and my family for my investigation into his involvement in human trafficking are part of a story that is still being written.”

Libyan smugglers are notorious for beating and torturing migrants in squalid holding centres and camps as a means of extracting money out of their families back home.

Libya has been plagued by instability and violence ever since its dictator Muammar Gaddafi was assassinated in a Nato-backed uprising in 2011.

Since then the country has been split into two halves and two administrations – one based in Tripoli, the other in Benghazi – with each supported by rival militias, criminal gangs and foreign powers including France, Italy, Turkey and Russia.