Europe Tag

Jerez de la Frontera (Spain) (AFP) Karim and Yves trekked for years through Africa from Cameroon before arriving in Spain where they now play football and rugby, realising a life-long ambition even if their daily lives are still a struggle. They’re not the only ones to have stepped onto Spanish shores with dreams of making it big in the sporting world. Associations and migrants say roughly a quarter of new arrivals’ main reason for coming is to play professionally. But a large majority are soon brought back down to earthRead More

Libya has issued arrest warrants for more than 200 Libyans and foreigners suspected of involvement in a smuggling network for Europe-bound migrants, the attorney general's office said on Thursday.Read More

Brussels (AFP) The EU warned African and other countries on Wednesday that their citizens will find it harder to get visas to Europe if they refuse to readmit economic migrants under the bloc’s efforts to curb migration. Brussels has been seeking greater cooperation from such countries to take back irregular migrants since Europe was hit in 2015 with its worst migration crisis since World War II. “I cannot understand how a country can refuse to take back its nationals” when they have entered Europe illegally, EU migration commissioner Dimitris AvramopoulosRead More

Tripoli (AFP) Libya has issued arrest warrants for more than 200 Libyans and foreigners suspected of involvement in a smuggling network for Europe-bound migrants, the attorney general’s office said on Thursday. “We have 205 arrest warrants for people (involved in) organising immigration operations, human trafficking, (cases) of torture, murder and rape,” said Seddik al-Sour, the director of the attorney general’s investigations office. The trafficking ring is alleged to include members of security services, leaders of migrant detention camps, and embassy officials from African countries based in Libya, Sour said. LibyaRead More

More than 16,000 African migrants have been repatriated from camps in Libya under an emergency plan, the EU's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said Tuesday.Read More

Strasbourg (France) (AFP) More than 16,000 African migrants have been repatriated from camps in Libya under an emergency plan, the EU’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said Tuesday. European and African leaders announced a plan for accelerated “voluntary” deportations in December after horrifying TV footage emerged of a slave market in Libya, where smugglers and criminal networks act with impunity. Libyan detention camps for migrants were already notorious after reports of rape, torture and beatings at facilities under the control of the UN-backed government of Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj.Read More

The Libyan navy on Saturday rescued 252 migrants seeking to reach Europe, in two separate operations off the country's western coast.Read More

Tripoli (AFP) The Libyan navy on Saturday rescued 252 migrants seeking to reach Europe, in two separate operations off the country’s western coast. “We were alerted… to the position of a migrant boat” around 30 kilometres (20 miles) off Zawiya, west of Tripoli, navy captain Rami al-Hadi Ghomed said. He said the 140 migrants on board, including 14 women and four children, were brought back to Tripoli’s naval base before being transferred to a detention centre. Since the 2011 fall and killing of longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi, unruly Libya hasRead More

The Tajoura migrant camp on the edge of Libya's Tripoli was the scene of a clash between lions: teams of Cameroonian and Senegalese footballers whose dream is to play in Europe.Read More

Tripoli (AFP) The Tajoura migrant camp on the edge of Libya’s Tripoli was the scene of a clash between lions: teams of Cameroonian and Senegalese footballers whose dream is to play in Europe. The Indomitable Lions and the Lions of Teranga took their names from those of their national teams, but the match had little of the atmosphere of African sports events. Played on a sandy pitch marked out by a low white wall, in front of a prison building, its only spectators were two prison guards. The teams hadRead More