Three Egyptian workers abducted by Libya Dawn militias succeeded in escaping and making their way back home. The three escapees told Al Bawaba News that they saw an opportunity to escape by car after clashes broke out in Derna, where they were held captive. One of the escapees, Mohamed Reda, said he had been kidnapped by Libya Dawn three days after his arrival in Libya December 2014. They claimed he had entered the country with a fake visa, he added. "They kept on torturing me for three months, for no apparent reason," Reda said. Abdallah Mohamed, 30, said he had traveled to Libya after his marriage in July, looking for a living. The militias kidnapped him just for being Egyptian, he said. "Sometimes they hanged me from the ceiling for ten hours. They beat me with sticks and whipped me. But the hardest thing was not knowing why I was abducted," Mohamed told Al Bawaba. The third escapee, Hamed Alaa, 35, said the kidnappers told them they'd been abducted because they were linked to the Egyptian intelligence. The three men affirmed that Libya Dawn was still holding at least 30 Egyptians, and that they were hoping the Egyptian authorities will intervene to save them. Last week reports claimed that 46 Egyptians had been abducted and handed to the Islamic State (IS) in Libya, which was denied by the Egyptian Foreign ministry. The Egyptian Minister of Civil Aviation declared that 12.009 Egyptian nationals had returned home safely, praising the role played by the Tunisian authorities who operated 52 flights in the past month to transport the Egyptians stranded on Libyan borders. February 2015, 21 Egyptian Christians were beheaded by IS militants, raising anger across the nation and prompting the Egyptian air forces to conduct airstrikes on IS hotbeds in Derna city.
