Detainees from Libya’s war held by fighters continue to be subjected to torture despite efforts by the provisional government to address the issue, according to the UN human-rights chief.

Navi Pillay told the UN Security Council she was extremely concerned about thousands of prisoners, most of them accused of being loyalists of the toppled government of Muammar Gaddafi and many from sub-Saharan Africa.

‘The lack of oversight by the central authorities creates an environment conducive to torture and ill-treatment’, Pillay said.

‘My staffs have received alarming reports that this is happening in places of detention that they have visited.’

She said it was urgent that all Libya’s detention centres be brought under control of the justice ministry and general prosecutor`s office and that detainees be screened so that they could be freed or receive a fair trial.

The government that replaced Gaddafi’s administration has been struggling to take control of the detainees held by the fighters who overthrew Gaddafi, but has been hampered by lack of prison staff, UN officials say.

Al Jazeera’s Stefanie Dekker, reporting from the Libyan capital, Tripoli, said ‘the government is facing real challenges’ in their efforts to ‘get the jails back under some kind of official control’.

‘We have to remember that this is an interim period, the country is getting back on its feet and the court systems are not up and running as they should be’, she said.

Earlier, Ian Martin, the UN special envoy for Libya, told the Security Council meeting that the Libyan justice ministry had so far taken over six prisons from the revolutionary brigades.

Neither Pillay nor Martin gave any figures for the number of people held by the fighters. Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, said in a report last November that it was about 7,000.

BDST 1846 hrs, January 26, 2012