When Sulaiman saw the Humanity 1 approaching, he thought to himself: “if they are Libyans, let me die. I will not go back there.”

The 25 year old Nigerian man is one of many rescued by the German NGO SOS Humanity on Tuesday (27 October) to have escaped living hell in Libya, at the hands of a regime paid by the EU to keep migrants away from its borders.

“I was in prison for one year, for no reason,” said Sulaiman, whose name has been changed to preserve his anonymity. “Any time in the morning they come to distribute food, there are beatings. No one lets you go without a beating,” he told EUobserver.

Every day he’d subsist on one small slice of bread in “a cage for 100 people, where there are all skeletons,” he described with tears in his eyes. 

Sulaiman had tried to leave Libya twice before on small boats, but each time he’d been pulled back to land by violent militias, one of whom he described to be an ‘official’ authority. 

Data from the International Organisation for migration (IOM) and the UN found over 200,000 people to have been illegally intercepted in the central Mediterranean and returned to Libya since 2016. 

And like many other search and rescue organisations, SOS Humanity’s own work has been significantly impeded by Libyan groups – whether they be the so-called Libyan coast guard or paramilitary groups known for hijacking small migrant boats in open sea to rob everyone on board and pull them back to illegal detention facilities.

Men, women, families with children, and unaccompanied minors alike are kept in prisons until they can pay their way out.

“I lied, and told my family I was in Tunisia,” a young boy from Sudan told EUobserver. 

“I knew my mother couldn’t take it, knowing what would be happening to me in Libya,” he said, after having been rescued by SOS Humanity alongside 27 others in the early hours of Tuesday. He is one of 10 children aboard traveling alone. 

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The Republic of Cyprus has reiterated its position that the 2019 Turkey-Libya MoU on maritime delimitation is “null and void”.

Speaking during a UN Security Council open debate on emerging technologies and maritime security, Cyprus’ representative Maria Michail said “this purported agreement is null and void, does not comply with international law and, in particular, the rules pertaining to the conclusion of treaties as well as UNCLOS.”

“Geography cannot be changed, nor can the sovereign rights of states be disregarded through arbitrary maritime delimitations,” she said.

Michail added that “article 121 of UNCLOS clearly establishes the regime of islands and their entitlement to maritime zones.”

She stressed that the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea is fundamental to maritime security, legal certainty and the peaceful settlement of disputes, adding that its provisions reflecting customary international law are binding upon all states.

“The Mediterranean is our common sea. Its security and stability depend on good neighbourly relations grounded on respect for international law and the sovereign rights of all coastal states,” she said.

Addressing the main theme of the debate, she reaffirmed Cyprus’ position that “technological progress must remain anchored in international law”, particularly the UN Charter and UNCLOS.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said that the recently signed maritime deal between Libya’s eastern ‌parliament and Turkey was “blatantly illegal, null and void,” adding that it “completely disregards the geography.”

Mitsotakis, speaking to Reuters as Greece ends its UN Security Council presidency, also called for an urgent “international truce” to protect shipping in the Black Sea after the sinking of a Greek-owned container vessel on Wednesday.

Greece challenges maritime boundaries agreement

Libya’s eastern ‌parliament last week approved a maritime boundaries deal with Turkey, drawing condemnation from Athens, but also Egypt, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, as a threat to regional security and international legal order.

“It completely disregards the geography, the reality that there are Greek islands — they seem to completely disappear in the thinking of Turkey and Libya,” Mitsotakis said, accusing them of attempting to create a “fait accompli” that ignores the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has said ​that reactions from the EU and others to the approval of the agreement, originally agreed in 2019, had no legitimate basis, defending Ankara’s policy in the eastern Mediterranean.

Since the 2019 Libya-Turkey ‌deal, Greece ⁠has awarded a license to a consortium led by Chevron CVX.N to look for gas off the island of Crete and has sought a separate agreement with Libya on demarcating their maritime zones.

Mitsotakis assured “there’s no risk that these explorations will be in any way challenged.”

Athens urges Libya to negotiate directly

Referring to Libya and Greece as “natural neighbors,” Mitsotakis, who first became prime minister in 2019 and is in his second term, urged the African country to negotiate directly with Athens and take the discussions “very, very seriously.”

Mitsotakis, 58, spoke to Reuters after chairing a council debate on maritime security, only hours after a Greek container ship sank after being hit by naval drones off Bulgaria in the latest strike on ships in the western Black Sea ​this month.

Greek-operated ships are among the world’s largest fleets of tankers and are ​pivotal for trade across the Black Sea region, whose ​waters are shared by Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania and Turkey, ⁠as well as warring Russia and Ukraine, which Moscow ​invaded in February 2022.

“We do need some sort of international truce when it comes to the freedom of navigation,” said Mitsotakis, adding that it was of “utmost priority” to allow for exports of grain from the region into the world through the Black Sea.

“Greek shipowners would be the first to resume trading in the Black Sea, also from Ukraine, assuming a safe passage is guaranteed,” he said, stressing the rising costs of shipping as chartering and insurance expenses have “gone through the roof.”

It was not immediately clear who had carried ⁠out the attack, which added to growing concerns about the impact ​of Russia’s war in Ukraine on commercial shipping in the area.

Mitsotakis said that Ukraine was financially dependent on exports of its products: “They had a bumper harvest, but the grain is now sitting in silos, in danger of rotting.”

“Unfortunately, for the moment, Russia doesn’t seem to be interested in engaging in a substantive discussion,” he said.

Greece seeks stronger EU naval presence in Red Sea

Mitsotakis also called on the European Union to bolster its naval mission to protect shipping in the Red Sea called Aspides, which was launched in 2024 to protect from attacks by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis.

Intensifying hostilities between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia have disrupted oil supplies and heightened the risk of a wider regional conflict, eight months since the US-Israeli strikes on Iran.

“My argument is simple: the European Union has an interest in having a concrete presence with hard assets in this part of the world, and we need more countries to participate in Aspides,” Mitsotakis told Reuters.

He said Greece, Italy and France have deployed “assets” as part of the mission and that was “clearly not enough.” Diplomats told Reuters as of late September there were six warships operating as part of the operation.

The Houthis said this week they had attacked Saudi military aircraft and repelled an ​advance by Saudi-backed forces near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, an important Red Sea shipping route.

“If we really want to send the message also to the Gulf countries that we take their security seriously, but we also protect the critical arteries and waterways that are absolutely indispensable for European trade, we should be willing to deploy more assets to this part of the world,” Mitsotakis said.

Athens backs continued sanctions on Russia

Asked about US President Donald Trump’s move earlier this month to lift sanctions on Russian diesel exports, Mitsotakis reaffirmed Greek support for sanctions on Moscow.

“We believe that we need to put economic pressure and impose more financial pain on Russia to send a very clear signal that as long as they prolong this war, they will suffer very specific economic consequences,” he said.