PARIS: European authorities should not be sending migrants trying to reach the continent back to Libya until the security situation there has stabilised, the chief of Human Rights Watch said.

“The way migrants are treated in Libya is horrendous, where we hear over and over stories of forced labour, forced sexual abuse, torture,” Kenneth Roth said in an interview as the group released its annual report on risks around the globe.

While acknowledging Europe’s right to restrict immigration after hundreds of thousands have poured into member states in recent years, Roth criticised a Brussels-backed deal that helps Libya block migrants from trying to reach Europe.

“The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has said that more migrants are dying inside Libya than die once they get in a boat to cross the Mediterranean. So that gives you a sense of how bad things are,” Roth said.

At least 3,100 migrants died or disappeared trying to cross to Europe last year, the IOM has said, though attempts have slowed since the deal by Libya and Italy, the main destination, to halt the flow.

Shocking images last year of black Africans being sold in Libya have led European officials to stop returning migrants to the country, Roth said.

“But they’re trying to do indirectly what they can’t do directly by building up and training the Libyan coastguard so that the Libyans on their own can simply return people back to the traffickers,” he said.

“You can help them return home if that’s what they want, but nobody should be forcibly returned to Libya.”

Roth, a 62-year-old former lawyer, also underscored the risks as more populist leaders come to power around the world, while criticising Western governments for not pushing hard enough against leaders accused of rights abuses in their own countries.

While he qualified the arrival of US President Donald Trump as “a moment of despair,” he was also critical of his predecessor Barack Obama over failing to close the Guantanamo prison or take stronger action against Syria’s Bashar Al Assad.

“I admire Obama,” Roth said, but “he wasn’t willing to pay the political price to actually close Guantanamo... He wasn’t really willing to do anything to stop Assad committing mass atrocities in Syria.”