VietJoy

Italian police arrested three men Monday accused of torturing and extorting money from migrants in a Libyan detention center.

Prosecutors in Sicily ordered the arrests of two Egyptians and one Guinean after several people identified them as their suspected tormentors.

The three allegedly ran a migrant camp at a former military base in Zawiya, Libya.

"I have been beaten several times. I suffered real torture that left scars on my body," one migrant told prosecutors.

Others say women were raped and migrants who could not pay a ransom were killed or sold to human traffickers.

Armed militias are in charge of many migrant camps in Libya, which hold those who arrived in the country looking to get to Europe and those the Libyan coast guard picked up in the Mediterranean.

Human rights groups have demanded the Libyan government shut down the migrant centers, calling them places of violence and squalor.

"This investigation ... confirms the inhumane living conditions in Libya's so-called detention centers and the need to act, including at the international level," said Luigi Patronaggio, chief prosecutor in the Sicilian city of Agrigento.