Over the past week security forces newly operating in neighborhoods around the capital, staffed mostly by armed young men, have conducted mass arrests of migrant workers from other African countries such as Chad, Sudan, Niger, and Mali, holding them in makeshift detention facilities, including a school and a soccer club. Human Rights Watch visited two such facilities and one prison, where the majority of African detainees interviewed claimed to be migrant workers detained simply because of their nationality and that they were not pro-Gaddafi mercenaries. Prior to the uprising, between 1 and 2 million African migrant workers were in Libya.
