BRITAIN, the European Union and Libya must be held accountable for human rights abuses committed against people trying to reach safety across their borders, refugees trapped in Libya told the Star today.

A group of around 1,600 people — mostly from Sudan, but also from South Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea — have been protesting daily outside a UN refugee agency (UNHCR) registration centre in the capital.

The protesters began gathering there at the beginning of October after a brutal police raid on the Gargaresh neighbourhood, in which about 4,000 people were violently rounded up and forced into the country’s condemned immigration detention centres.