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Human Rights Watch says thousands of internally displaced people from Libya’s eastern city of Benghazi are being prevented from returning to their homes there.
The campaign group says armed groups, some of whom are loyal to East Libya’s military forces, have been using violence against 3,700 forcibly displaced families to stop them from going back to the city.
Several families say their properties were seized or deliberately destroyed, and others say relatives were arrested and tortured by military brigades, or their affiliates, when they tried to return.
These are residents who had either fled the city or moved to safer homes and makeshift shelters during a three-year military offensive against a range of militias that included Islamist groups.
In December, that conflict was officially declared over by the self-styled army there, known as the LNA.
Those armed groups accuse them of being “supporters of terrorism”.
In January, a statement from the commander of Eastern Libya’s self-styled army, Khalifa Hefter, warned against preventing the displaced from returning home, in the absence of what he called “lawful justifications”.
That statement also said that any violation against private properties or homes would be considered “a criminal act” and the perpetrators would be prosecuted.
At the height of the war in Benghazi, an estimated 13,000 thousand families fled the city for safer grounds.
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