BRUSSELS: The head of medical aid group Doctors Without Borders says European governments are paying for the criminal abuse of migrants in Libya by funding programs to stop them leaving for Europe.

International President Joanne Liu said in an open letter Thursday that Libya's detention system is "a thriving enterprise of kidnapping, torture and extortion."

She said "European governments have chosen to contain people in this situation. People cannot be sent back to Libya, nor should they be contained there."

Liu rejected praise for European policies credited with having cut the number of migrants leaving Libya for Europe and drownings in the Mediterranean.

She branded such thinking "at best, pure hypocrisy and at worse, a cynical complicity in the organized business of reducing human beings to merchandise in human traffickers' hands."

There was no immediate response from the EU.