Brussels - The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor held a vigil on Thursday in front of the European Commission headquarters in Brussels, condemning torture practices carried out by various parties in Libya as part of the internal conflict in the country for more than eight years now.

Volunteers before the European Commission headquarters lined up with T-shirts that read "Stop Torture in Libya," stressing that European countries should use their influence to pressure the various parties in Libya to stop systematic torture in prisons and detention centers.

The activity aimed at drawing attention to the grave violations carried out against detainees in Libya including various forms of torture that are contrary to international and humanitarian laws and customs, in addition to recording numerous death cases as a result of torture during the past period.

The vigil is part of a project launched by the Euro-Med Monitor during the past year which aims to monitor and document cases of torture in Libya, said Susan Yaseen, the Campaigns and Communications officer at the Euro-Med. She added that cases of torture are constantly increasing in the country as a result of the divisions that have torn the country apart where the parties to the conflict are racing against time to build more prisons and detention centers, in the near absence of an independent monitoring system that follows what is going on inside those prisons.

The participants called on the European Union to shoulder its legal and humanitarian responsibilities regarding Libya's human rights violations, especially in the cases of torture of detainees, armed conflicts and the international support for some of the parties causing violations against civilians.

According to the statistics of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, the number of official prisons in Libya before the outbreak of internal conflicts in 2014 reached 33 supervised by the UN with more than 6,500 detainees. Field research confirms that these numbers have doubled due to chaos and the establishment of warring militias in Libya of their own prisons which lacks legal procedures.