A trip to the bottom of Libya's prisons, where it is tortured and turns migrants dispossession

A row of provisional warehouses occurs along the highway that crosses Ghout al-Shaal, a neighborhood of mechanical and scrapping workshops to the west of Tripoli, the capital of Libya.One of them, an old cement and concrete deposit, was reopened in January 2021, with higher walls and crowned by Espino wires.

A group of men in blue and black camouflage uniform armed with kalashnikov surround a merchandise container that acts as office.At its main door, a poster hangs: ‘Court of prosecution of illegal immigrants’.The installation is a secret prison of migrants known as Al Mabani, which simply means the building.

At three o'clock in the morning of February 5, 2021, armed men took Aliou Candé, a 28 -year migrant from Guinea Bissau, strong and shy, to jail.A year and a half before he had abandoned his home because his crops produced less and less and wanted to meet with his brothers in Europe.

But while crossing the Mediterranean in a boat crowded with another 130 migrants, the Libyan Coast Guard intercepted them and led to jail.They pushed them inside cell 4, in which there were another 200 prisoners.There was hardly any room to sit and migrants moved constantly to avoid tramples.

The fluorescent lights of the roof remained on all night.The only natural light source was a grid at the door of about 30 centimeters wide.Of the beams, where they nest the escape birds of a near corral, feathers and excrements fell.

On the walls, migrants had written phrases like these: "A soldier never folds", or "we move forward with our eyes closed".Aliou Candé found a place in a corner between the prisoners and began to panic: "What do we do?" He asked a cellmate.

No one knew that Candé had been captured.He was not accused of any crime or allowed him to speak with a lawyer;Nor did they give him any indication about a possible release.

The jail

The first days remained silent, subject to the horrible routines of the place.The Zintan Brigade (one of the most powerful militias in the country, anti Yoslamist and that helped defeat Gaddafi in 2011) controlled jail and his soldiers patrolled her.Yonside there were about 1.500 migrants distributed in eight cells and segregated by sex.

They only had a sink for every 100 people.Candé had to urinate in a bottle of water or defecate in the showers.Migrants slept in infested carpets of lice, scabies and fleas;There was not for everyone, and established sleeping shifts: some in the morning and others at night.

The prisoners fought to rest in the shower, the only ventilated space.Twice a day, at meals, they were leading them in a row of one to the patio.They were forbidden to look at the sky or talk.The guards, as a zoo vigilantes, put bowls with food on the ground and migrants sat in circles on earth to eat.

The guards were brutal and hit who disobey their orders with what they first had on hand: whether a shovel, a hose, a cable or the branch of a tree."They glued without apparent reason," Tokam Martin Luther told me, a man entered into years from Cameroon who slept by Candé.

Among the prisoners it was rumored that the guards got rid of those killed in a mountain of rubble that was on the other side of the walls of the enclosure.The guards released migrants in exchange for 2.500 Libyan Dinares, about 480 euros.

During meals, the guards walked with a mobile phone, which left migrants to call their families and ask for money to pay their rescue.Candé's family could never have allowed one so high."Yof you don't have anyone who to call, you feel," said Luther.

Repression

Yon the last six years, the European Union, tired of the political and economic cost that causes to receive migrants from sub -Saharan Africa, has implanted a complicated system that intercepts them before reaching the European coasts.

The EU has equipped and trained the Navy and the Libyan Coast Guard, a paramilitary body that patrols the Mediterranean, obstructing some rescue operations and capturing migrants that are sent to a network of prisons managed by various liberty militias that are enriched with thatseclusion.

During the first seven months of this year, about 6.000 migrants have been sent to these facilities, most of this secret prison of Al Mabani.

Some international aid organizations have documented the abuses perpetrated in these prisons: torture with electric shocks, children violated by the guards, extorted families in exchange for bailouts, men and women sold to perform forced labor.

Salah Marghni, Minister of Justice between 2012 and 2014, told me: "The EU has carried out something that thought and planned very carefully for years, creating a horrible place in Libya to deter migrants to travel to Europe".

Three weeks after the arrival of Candé to his captivity, a group of prisoners conceived a plan to escape.Moussa Karouma, a Yovory Coast Migrant, and several of his companions defined in a paper and left it in a corner of the cell until the smell became intolerable.

"Yot was the first time Yo was in jail," Karouma told me."Yo was terrified".When the guards finally opened the door of the smelly cells, 19 migrants shot.They climbed to the top of a bathroom and jumped from a height four and a half meters to the other side of the wall to disappear in the labyrinth of alleyways that surround the jail.

The consequences for those who stayed were bloody.The guards asked for reinforcements and hit the prisoners.

"One who was in my pavilion was hit with a gun in his head, passed out and began to tremble," said one of those migrants to Amnesty Yonternational.“That night they didn't call an ambulance to take it;He still breathed, but he couldn't talk.Yo don't know what it will have been.Nor do Yo know what Yo had done ".

During the following weeks, Candé tried not to get into trouble and clung to a rumor that ran in jail: that the guards were going to free some migrants for Ramadan, nine weeks later."The Lord is miraculous," Luther wrote in his diary."May his grace continue to protect all migrants in the world, especially those of Libya".

Migration crisis

What has come to be called "migration crisis", began in 2010, when migrants fleeing war conflicts in the Middle East, of insurgences in sub -Saharan Africa, or the effects of climate change began to reach Europe inwhirlwind.

And the issue continues: the World Bank predicts that, in the next 50 years, droughts, loss of crops and desertification will cause the displacement of 50 million people, mostly from the southern hemisphere, which will increase migrations towardsEurope.

Yon 2015, in the most serious of the crisis, one million migrants arrived in Europe from the Middle East and Africa in just one year, according to UN Migration.The biggest tragedy was developed in 2013, when a patera with more than 500 erythre caught fire and sank into the Mediterranean, just over a kilometer and a half of Lampedusa (Yotaly).360 people died.

The reaction in Europe was at first compassion."We can do it!" German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued when she promised to design liberal immigration policies, a position for which she was appointed person of the year by Time magazine in 2015.

The Yotalian coasts are about 300 kilometers from North Africa.Yon early 2014, Matteo Renzi became the youngest prime minister in his country's history, he was 39 years old.He was a moderate, persuasive and telegenic progressive, in the style of Bill Clinton, and many predicted that he would dominate his country's policy for a decade.

As Angela Merkel had done, he promised to receive migrants with statements like this: "Yof Europe turns around the presence of corpses, then it does not deserve to call itself a civilized Europe".

Supported the execution of the ambitious search and rescue program Operation Mare Nostrum, designed to guarantee a safe crossing to about 150.000 migrants, who were also offered legal assistance to manage their asylum requests.

According to Emma Bonino, former European Commission.

However, the tide of migrants did not stop.And migrants required medical care, employment and education, and increased pressure on economic resources."Yot's a tremendous dilemma," James Hollifield, one of the great migration experts who works in different global universities and institutes told me.

"Countries have to find a way to protect their borders without destroying the essence of the liberal state".Nationalist political parties as an alternative by Germany or the French National Front began to take advantage of the situation to extend xenophobia.

Yon 2015, several men from North Africa assaulted a large group of young women in Colonia (Germany), feeding the feeling of fear.The following year, a Tunisian asylum seeker lashed out with a truck against the attendees of a Christmas market in Berlin, an attack that resulted in 12 dead.

At sea

Renzi's Mare Nostrum operation cost about 115 million euros.A price that Yotaly could not assume.Efforts to relocate to 60.000 migrants in Yotaly and Greece staggered: neither Poland nor Hungary, governed by nationalist parties, accepted neither a single migrant.

Yon Austria a wall with Yotaly began to be built in 2016.The politicians of the Yotalian right made fun of Renzi and climbed into the surveys.Renzi resigned in December 2016 after losing the referendum of constitutional reform and subsequently his political formation (the Democratic Party) dismantled its migratory policies.

He also retracted his initial generosity: "We have to strip us of our feeling of guilt," he would say later."Yotaly does not have the moral duty to receive people who are worse than us".

Yon 2016, Europe adopted a different approach led by Marco Minniti, former director of Renzi, who became the new Yonterior Minister of Yotaly.Minniti, son of an Yotalian army general, explained error, that in his opinion, Renzi had committed: "We ignored two very powerful feelings," he said."Rabies and fear".

At his instances, his country canceled his commitment to carry out search and rescue operations more than 50 kilometers from his coast.The EU began to reject humanitarian ships that transported rescued migrants and who wanted to dock in their ports.Yotaly came to prosecute the captains of ships for facilitating people traffic.Minniti soon won the nickname of "Minister of Fear".

A controversial program

Yon 2015, the EU created a program called Emergency Fiduciary Fund for Africa, to treat the deep causes of forced displacements and irregular migration, and contribute to a better migration management.Since then he has invested about 5.300 million euros.

Yots defenders argue that the program promotes development, which helps control COVYoD-19 pandemic in Sudan or serves in Ghana to train people to occupy green jobs.However, much of their work is to pressure African countries to impose migration restrictions and finance agency to fulfill these restrictions to prevent migrants from reaching Europe.

Yon practice, what the program does is transfer the border of Europe to the northern edge.

Yon 2018, some members of the European Parliament inquired the European Commission on an alleged “purchase lists” sent by Niger officials in which they asked for cars, airplanes and gift helicopters in exchange for approveing anti-immigration policies.

Yon Ethiopia, the program allowed to share the personal data of Ethiopian citizens with the intelligence service of that country, which has an arrest history of protesters, who later mistreats brutally.Yon Sudan, the money was used to create an intelligence center for the Secret Police, which later used the resources to suffocate demonstrations.

The funds are distributed at the discretion of a committee chaired by the European Commission and are not subject to the scrutiny of the European Parliament.(A fiduciary fund spokesman told me that their programs "seek to save lives, protect those who need it and combat people traffic")).

The Yotalian Minister Minniti noticed Libya as the main partner of Europe to end the immigration.Yon October 2011, Gaddafi was overthrown and killed in a rebellion triggered by Arab spring and then supported by an invasion headed by the United States.

From that moment, the country became a failed state.Yon 2017, Minniti traveled to Tripoli to reach agreements with the new Libyan government and his powerful militias.

The EU, Yotaly and Libya signed a memorandum of understanding that explained the collaboration "reiterating the firm will to cooperate in the urgent identification of solutions to solve the problem of clandestine migrants who cross Libya to reach Europe by sea".

Yon the last six years, the Fiduiciario Fund has allocated around 480 million euros for Libya to face migration.Former Libyan Minister Marghani told me that the objective of the program was clear: “Convert Libya into the bad film.Hide their policies in Libya while good Europeans say they are providing money so that this infernal system is safer ”.

Minniti has affirmed that the fear that Europe feels towards an uncontrolled immigration is "a legitimate feeling that democracy has to listen to".

Yots policies have resulted in a chopped drop in the number of migrants.From January to June 2021, for example, less than 21.000 people managed to reach Europe through the Mediterranean.

Minniti said in the press in 2017 that “what Yotaly has done in LibyThink tank attached to a group of the Yotalian military industry, declined to comment for this article).

The Yotalian right, which helped defeat Renzi, applauded Minniti's work."When we proposed measures of this type, we were labeled as racists," said Matteo Salvini, leader of the Yotalian Nationalist Party Northern League."Now, finally, it seems that we are understanding that we were right".

The childhood

Aliou Candé, the migrant of Guinea Bissau, grew on a farm near the village of Sintchan Demba Gaira.There is no mobile coverage or roads, pipes or electricity.He lived in an adobe house, half painted blue and the other half yellow, with his wife, hava, and his two young children.

Next to it there is a tree where the family gathered to drink tea.Candé was very restless in the village: he listened to foreign artists and was a fan of European football teams.He spoke English and French and was learning Portuguese in the hope of living in Portugal one day."Aliou was a charming boy, he never got into trouble," Jacaria told me, one of his brothers.Yo worked hard and people respected him ".

Candé fields produce cassava, yam and anacardos, crops that suppose 90% of the country's exports.However, climatic patterns are altering, probably because of global warming.

"We no longer go cold during the cold season, and the heat arrives before what it should," says Jacaria.Floods are more intense, which means that most of the year you can only reach the plantations in Canoa, and droughts last double.There are more mosquitoes, who spread diseases such as meningitis.

When one of Candé's children contracted malaria, it took a day to arrive at the hospital and almost died.

Candé, a Muslim devotee, worried him to fail before God when keeping his family."He felt guilty and envious," says Bobo, another of his brothers.Jacaria had already emigrated to Spain, and Denbas, another of his brothers, to Yotaly.

The two sent money home with photos of elegant restaurants."Everyone who leaves outside brings fortune home," Samba, Candé's father told me.Candé's wife was eight months pregnant, but her family encouraged him to travel to Europe and promised him that they would take care of his children.

"The people of his generation went out and they were doing well," said his mother Aminatta."Why not him?"On the morning of September 13, 2019, Candé departed to Europe taking with him a romantic novel, two pairs of pants, a shirt, a newspaper with leather tapas and 600 euros."Yo don't know how long it will take," Candé told his wife that morning."But Yo love you and return".

Candé crossed the central Africa by car, doing hutop or as a polizón in cars and buses, until Agadez arrived, in Niger, known before as the entrance to the Sahara.Historically, the borders of the countries of Central Africa have remained open, as in the EU.

However, in 2016, the EU, through the Fiduiciario Fund, contributed to implement a new Niger legislation called Law 36, which converted a buoyant transit economy into a criminal economy;They also financed the authorities to enforce the law.

New route

Overnight, bus drivers and guides who had transferred migrants to the north for years by a road flanked by water wells, became traffickers of people and susceptible to being sentenced to up to 30 years ofjail.

To avoid being arrested, migrants had to choose the most dangerous routes.Yon 2019, Candé and another half a dozen migrants crossed the Sahara hidden in trucks and buses and sleeping in the sand next to the road.

"Heat and dust are horrible," Candé told Jacaria by phone.Managed to cross a part of Algeria controlled by bandits."They take you and hit you until they decide to let you go," said his family."That's the only thing there is".

Yon January 2020 he arrived in Morocco, where he wanted to pay to take him by boat to Spain, but they asked for 3.000 euros.Jacaria begged him to return.However, Candé replied: “You worked hard when you were in Europe.You sent money to the family.Now it's my turn.When Yo arrive, you can return home and rest, and Yo will do the job ".

Yo had heard that in Libya he could reserve a space in a patera to reach Yotaly.Yon December he arrived in Tripoli and rented a room in GareSH, a neighborhood of migrants.His uncle grandfather, Demba Balde, a 40 -year -old tailor, had managed to live in Libya for years dodging the authorities.

He found a painter's job and begged him to leave his plan to cross the Mediterranean."Yo told him it was a deadly route".

In the ground

Yon May Yo traveled to Tripoli with a team of researchers to analyze the migrant detention system.Shortly before Yo had founded a non -profit organization called The Outlaw Ocean Project, which informs about human rights and environmental issues in a maritime context.

Yon Tripoli, the coast was dotted with offices, hotels, apartment buildings and half -building schools.There were armed men with military uniform at each crossing.Almost no western journalist can enter Libya, but we get visas thanks to an international aid group.

Shortly after arriving, Yo gave my team location devices if they were lost and recommended that they hide a copy of the passport in their shoes.They lodged us at a hotel near the city center and Yo got a modest security team.

Libya has not always been an inhospitable place for migrants.Yon the mid -nineties, Muammar Gaddafi embraced panphricanism and encouraged the entry of sub -Saharan Africans as invited workers to work in the country's pipelines.

But in the early 2000.Yon 2007, he created different visas regulations for Arabs and Africans.Yon 2008, he signed a "friendly treaty" with Silvio Berlusconi that, among other things, promised to help Yotaly curb irregular immigration.

Sometimes Yo used it as a trick in negotiations.Yon 2010, he threatened to turn Europe "into a new black continent" if EU officials did not send millions of euros to fight immigration.After being overthrown, Libya plunged into chaos.

Today there are two governments that dispute legitimacy: the Government of National Unity, recognized by the UN, and the interim government, supported by Russia and the self -proclaimed Libyan National Army.Both resort to inconstant alliances with armed militias that lead large areas of the country.When there are uproar, the remote beaches of the country become exit points among migrants.

Libya's coastal guard looks like an official entity, but lacks a unified command.Yot consists of local patrols, accused for years by the United Nations of having links with militias (cooperators usually refer to it as "the alleged coastal guard of Libya").

Yon 2017, at the beginning of the project, Minniti told the press: "When we said we had to relaunch Libya's coastal guard, it seemed like a fantasy".But since then the Fiduiciario Fund for EU has spent tens of thousands of euros to grant this formidable power to paramilitary.

Yon principle, coastal guards must protect the coast of their country from foreign threats, but Libya's coast guard protects Europe from migrants.

Change of plans

Yon 2018, the Yotalian government, with the approval of the EU, helped Liby150 kilometers from the Libyan coast, well entered into international waters and halfway from the Yotalian coasts.

The EU supplied six fiberglass fiberglass boats, 30 Toyota Land Cruiser vehicles, radios, satellite phones and 500 uniforms.Yon September 2020, about one million euros were spent on 10 containers where the command center would be housed to coordinate the interceptions in the sea, and also to provide training to its officers.

Last October, some EU officials attended, along with other local commanders, a ceremony to inaugurate two shining ships, built in Yotaly and modernized in Tunisia with money from the Fiduciary Fund.

"The reconditioning of these two ships is an excellent example of cooperation between the European Union, Yotaly, and Libya," said José Sabadell, now EU ambassador to Libya.

Perhaps the most valuable help comes from Frontex, the European Agency of the Border Guard and Coasts created in 2004, in principle to monitor the Eastern Europe.

Yon 2015, Frontex announced that it would lead a “systematic effort to capture and destroy boats” used to transport migrants.Today it manages a budget of 500 million euros and has its own uniformed service;Yot has ships, airplanes, vehicles and personnel in operations that extend beyond the EU borders.

The agency maintains almost constant surveillance of the Mediterranean through drones and maritime patrol aircraft.When it detects a boat with migrants, it sends photos and location to its partners in the region, including the Libyan Coast Guard.A Frontex spokesman states that the agency has never "cooperated directly with the Libyan authorities".

But an investigation carried out by European media, including Lighthouse-Reports, Der Spiegel, Libération and Ard, documented 20 cases in which, immediately after Frontex monitored migrant vessels, they were intercepted by Libya's Coast Guard.

The investigation found evidence that sometimes Frontex sends the location of migrant vessels directly to the Coast Guard.

Yon an exchange of messages through WhatsApp in May of this year, for example, Frontex wrote to someone with the name of the Coast Guard of Libya the following: “Good morning, Mr..We have located a drift vessel in [coordinates].The occupants are shrinking water.Please confirm the reception of this message ".

Recently their officers sent me the results of a petition to consult their files, which indicate that, from February 1 to 5, the days when Candé was on the high seas, the agency exchanged 37 emails with the Coast GuardDe Libya (Frontex refused to provide the content of the emails, with the excuse that they put the "migrants' safety") at risk.

A senior Frontex official, who asked to remain in anonymity for fear of reprisals, told me that the agency also provides surveillance recordings to the Yotalian authorities, which can then go to the Coast Guard.

(The agencies that take care of surveillance, the Yotalian Coast Guard and the Maritime Rescue Coordination Center, located in Rome, did not respond to my request for comments).

Legal experts claim that these procedures violate international laws against the return of migrants to dangerous places.The Frontex official argues that even this "indirect" method did not free the responsibility agency: "You supply the information.You do not carry out the action, but it is the information that facilitates hot return ”.

Sea control

The official repeatedly urged his superiors to stop contributing to the return of migrants to Libya."Yot didn't matter what you said to them," he told me."They were not willing to understand".(Frontex spokesman told me that "in any potential search and rescue operation, the priority was to save lives").

Libyan coast guard ships rush to migrants before they take them to Europe.Sometimes they shoot the rescue humanitarian ships or immigrant vessels.According to data provided by the Yonternational Migration Organization of the United Nations, since January 2016 the Coast Guard has intercepted more than 90.000 migrants.

Yon 2017, a ship from the Sea-Watch humanitarian organization responded to the relief calls of a migrant vessel that was sinking.He launched two inflatable rafts to rescue them, but a ship from the Libya Coast Guard, Ras Jadir arrived before, and overturned them.

Then he took the migrants out of the water before they could climb to the NGO ship, whipping them with a rope as they climbed on board."Yot gave the feeling that the only interest of the Coast Guard was to take Libya as many migrants as they could, no matter if someone was drowning," Johannes Bayer told me, then responsible for the Sea-Watch mission.

A migrant jumped into the water and grabbed Ras Jadir, who was beginning to accelerate to leave, dragging him through the water.At least 20 people died in the operation, including a two -year -old boy.

Yon February of this year, another ship of the Coast Guard shot and sank a migrant vessel;Five people died drowned while the ship's commanders recorded it with the mobile phone.

Libya's coast guard seems to operate impunity.Yon October 2020, Abdel-Rahman Al-Milad, commander of a unit in Zawiya, was sanctioned by the UN Security Council and arrested by the Libyan authorities, accused of being “directly involved in the sinking of migrant vesselsthrough the use of firearms ".

Al-Milad was a well-known figure that attended meetings with the Yotalian authorities in Rome and Sicily in 2017 to ask for money from the Fiduiciary Fund.Last April he was released, adducing lack of evidence.

The Coast Guard, who has declined to comment for this report, has once highlighted the success obtained when reducing migration to Europe, but has also claimed that the Humanitarian ships of the Mediterranean hinder their efforts to combat the traffic of people.

"Why have the NGOs declared war?" A spokesman asked before the Yotalian media.The spokesman for the Fiduiciario Fund said that the EU does not give money to the coastal guard, that they only provide training and equipment, and that their goal is to “save the lives of those who venture to make such a dangerous trip, either by land or bysea".

Yon May of this year, Ed Ou, one of my team's video operators, spent three weeks aboard a ship without borders that tried to rescue migrants in the Mediterranean.

The organization located migrants boats with the help of a radar and airplanes led by voluntary pilots, but in most cases the Coast Guard was advanced and captured to migrants.

From time to time, they saw a front of Frontex, an Yoai Heron with an autonomy of up to 45 hours that spinned on their heads.The ship tried to bail."Grill our goal," ordered one of the officers.

Another said: "Stay out of libya waters if we don't want us to turn to other measures".From time to time they managed to perform the occasional rescue, such as that of a group of Sudanese migrants, who had tears in their eyes how the system worked in Libya.

One of them the coast guard had hit and tortured him.Another had witnessed how they killed two friends at a Libyan detention center.A third one wore a shirt with the fuck to Libya hand painted by hand.

The journey​

At 10 a.m. on February 3, 2021, Candé and about 100 more migrants departed from the Libyan coast aboard an inflatable rubber boat.Excited, some started to sing.Two hours later, the boat penetrated international waters.Candé sitting at one of the edges of the boat, was full of hope.

He told other occupants that he was not only sure that he would arrive in Europe, but he was already thinking about repeating the trip with his wife and children.

The human beings trafficker had put three migrants in charge of the boat.One of them was in charge of the compass.Another, the ‘Captain’, drove the engine and satellite phone;He had to call the trafficker if a problem arose and, once they were far away from Libya, call Alarm Phone, a humanitarian organization, and request the recipe.

And the third, the ‘commander’ kept the order and made sure that no one touched the cap that, if retired, would deflate the boat.The sea began to chop.The migrants were so tight that they couldn't even stretch their legs.The waves rose and the engine smoke caused them nausea.

The accumulated water at the base of the vessel was filled with vomiting, feces, caramel wrappers and pieces of bread.Several migrants tried how they could shrink water with plastic bottles.A fight broke out and someone threatened to crack the boat with a knife, but they managed to contain him.

"Everyone began to pray to their God," recalls Mohamed David Soumahoro, one of the friends that Candé made in that boat."One to Allah, another to Jesus, and another to that of beyond".The women broke down to cry, and the children, when they saw that the elderly panicked, they did the same ”.

At sunset, the waters calmed down.They agreed that they were already far from Libya and called for help.An alarm operator Phone informed them that there was a merchant ship not too far from where they were.

The boat became a party."Bosa, free, bosa, free!" Migrants sang (Osa in Fulani means victory).Candé turned to his new friend Soumahoro, and with his eyes on, he said: “Yonshallah, we are going to get it!Yotaly!"But when the merchant ship arrived, the captain told them that they had no life boats and moved away.

At that time, Candé's boat was just over 110 kilometers from Yotaly, far from Libyan Aguas, but even in the extended jurisdiction that Europe had helped establish for the Coast Guard.

When it was about five o'clock in the afternoon of February 4, Candé and other migrants spotted a plane that flew over the boat;He was going around 15 minutes and then get away.Data collected by ADS-B Exchange, an organization that tracks air traffic, shows that the aircraft, called Eagle1, was a Beech King Air 350, a surveillance plane rented by Frontex.

About three hours later, a ship appeared on the horizon."As we approached, we distinguished black and green stripes from the flag," Souumahoro told."Everyone started crying and taking their hands to their heads:‘ Shit, it's Libyan! ’” The boat was a P350 vitorious patrol ship, made of steel, fiberglass and kevlar.

Yot was one of the ships that the EU had opened in October of the previous year.He hit the migrants vessel three times and ordered them to climb the vessel on the ladder."Moveos!" Shouted the officers.One of them hit migrants several times with the rifle cylinder head;Another told them where to sit while whipping them with a rope.

The migrants were driven back to the ground, where they were uploaded to buses that would take them to the Mabai prison.

Tripoli

When Yo arrived in Libya, government officials promised me that they would allow me to follow a unit of the Coast Guard and visit the prison.But after trying for several days, it was clear that neither was going to happen.One day in the afternoon Yo went with my team to a discreet alley located about 30 kilometers from the detention center.

We released a video with video and fly on the patio of Al Mabani at a sufficient height so that the guards will not detect it.On the screen, we saw how the guards prepared migrants after eating to drive them back to their cells.

Some 65 prisoners were sitting in a corner of the patio, squeezed and motion.

When one of the migrants looked the other way, a guard hit him.

During and after Gaddafi's mandate, Libya built dozens of facilities to enclose all types of detainees: political prisoners, militia members, foreign mercenaries.When Europe turned to the country to intercept migrants, they already had prisons and detention centers.

There are currently about 15 recognized centers, of which MABANYo is the greatest.An official from the Yonternational Organization for Migration (YoYoM) told me that since 2017 tens of thousands of migrants have passed through prisons.Libya law establishes that unauthorized foreigners can remain indefinitely detained without a lawyer.

Yot does not distinction between economic refugees, asylum seekers and victims of illegal trafficking.

Yon May, six women from the Shara ’Al-Zawiya detention center told some Amnesty Yonternational researchers who had been raped and undergoing sexual torture.Yon the facilities of Abu Salim, two migrants were killed during an attempt to escape last February.

"Death in Libya is normal: nobody is going to look for you and nobody will find you," said a migrant stopped there.Diana Eltahawy of Amnesty Yonternational, specialized in North Africa, told me in July: "The entire network of migrant detention centers in Libya is rotten to the core".

Migrants captured by the Coast Guard are driven to bus prisons, many of them provided by the EU.Sometimes, coast guard units sell migrants to a detention center in exchange for money.

Some seem to be, they don't even reach official prisons.During the first seven months of 2021, more than 15.000 migrants fueron capturados por la Guardia Costera Libia, según la Organización Mundial para las Migraciones de la ONU, pero solo unos 6.000 arrive at prisons.

"The accounts do not come out," Federico Soda, head of Mission at Libya de la YoYoM told me.Soda believes that many migrants disappear in "unofficial" facilities led by traffickers and militias, where humanitarian organizations do not have access.

Al Mabai prison was created by Emad Al-Tarabulsi, a high position of the Zintan Brigade, at the beginning of 2021.The militia maintains links with the Zintan tribe, which contributed to the fall of Gaddafi and kept his son as imprisoned for years.

At present, the group is aligned with the National Unity Government supported by the UN, where the aforementioned Al-Tarabulsi exercised as Chief of Yontelligence (Al-Tarabulsi has declined to make statements for this report).The prison was built at one end of the city controlled by its militia, and its members became the staff of the facilities and their gunmen.

To direct it, Al-Tarabulsi appointed a second trusted second, Noureddine al-Ghreetly, a militia commander.

Previously, Al-Ghreetly himself had directed another brutal jail for migrants called Tajoura, located in a military base east of Tripoli, on the outskirts of the city.

Yon a 2019 report made by Human Rights Watch, six prisoners, including two 16 -year -old boys, claimed to have received strong swelling in the installation;And a woman said she was sexually assaulted in repeated occasions.

The report authors said they had seen how a dam was trying to hang themselves while the guards looked at her without doing anything.According to UN researchers, they forced migrants to carry out forced labor for the Zintan Brigade, to clean weapons, store ammunition and download military shipments.

Yon July 2019, the rebel forces made air attacks against the military base and collapsed the hangars where the migrants were.More than 50 people died, including six children.The majority of those who survived were relocated to Al Mabani.

The EU acknowledges that migrant prisons are atrocious.A fiduciary fund spokesman told me that “the EU position against the conditions under which migrants are kept in the detention centers is clear: the unacceptable situation.The current arbitrary detention system must end ”.

Last year, Josep Borrell, high representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, said that "the decision to unjustly stop migrants rests under the sole responsibility" of the Libyan Government, and that "the commission does not support the system of the system ofdetention implemented by the country ".

Yon the initial agreement signed with Libya, the EU promised to finance and guarantee the safety of detention centers where migrants would be maintained.Today, however, European officials insist that they do not directly finance detention centers directly.

The expenses of the fiduiciary fund are opaque, but a spokesman told me that they only give money to the UN agencies and international NGOs that provide “emergency support for migrants and detained refugees”, which includes “health care, psychosocial support, cash for expenses and non -food products ”.

However, Tineke Strik, Dutch deputy in the Green Group of the European Parliament, told me that this statement did not make much sense."Yof the EU did not finance the Libya Coast Guard, there would be no interception and would not derive migrants to these horrible detention centers," he told me.

Strik also pointed out that the EU sends funds to the Government of National Unity of Libya, whose directory for the fight against illegal migration is responsible for supervising the centers.

Although it does not pay directly the construction of the detention facilities or the salaries of their gunmen, he said, the money spent through government agencies and NGOs indirectly help to support much of those operations.

The EU buys the ships that capture migrants, the touch screen tablets that cooperators use to tell them when they land, and the buses that lead them to prisons.

The EU money that is distributed through agencies such as the Yonternational Migration Organization and the UN high commissioner for refugees pays the blankets, shelter clothes and the shoes they receive when they arrive when they arrive.

That money also builds the bathrooms and showers of the facilities, buy the soap, the personal hygiene kits and the paper towels used by migrants, as well as the foam carpets where they sleep.

The EU Fiduciary Fund for Africa pays the SUVs that the Libyan authorities use to chase migrants who have escaped from detention centers and those who enter the country through the Sahara desert.When they get sick, the ambulances that take them to the hospital are also paid by the Trust Fund.

And when they die, the EU money pays the bodies for the bodies and form the Libias authorities to bury them in a religiously appropriate way.Yondividually, some of these initiatives help the prisons be more human, but, together, they contribute to sustaining the system.

An internal report made in 2019 for the EU border assistance mission recognized it and warned that a part of the last money certificate, about 90 million euros, would probably go to the management of detention centers, whichwould lead to more exploitation and abuse of migrants.

Militias use several methods to profit from detention centers.Money and assets that NGOs and government agencies send for migrants, a system called "help deviation" are often appropriated..

The director of a detention center located in Misrata told Human Rights Watch researchers that the militia directed by the jail also directed the catering company that provided the food, and that diverted 85% of the money that the government destined to feedTo migrants.

They have also documented that militias that steal food, blankets, cubes and cleaning items.An internal study funded by the Trust Fund in April 2019 revealed that much of the money sent through NGO ends in the coffers of the militias."Most of the time, it is nothing more than a way of extracting benefits," says the study.

The laws dating from the Gaddafi era allow foreigners to force foreigners, regardless of their age, to work without salary.A Libyan citizen can take migrants from a detention center in exchange for money, become his "tutor" and supervise his work, carried out privately, for a period of time fixed.

Yon 2017, the CNN broadcast images of what looked like a slave auction, in which migrants were sold to work in the field and construction, with bids that began from 400 Dinares - about 76 euros - by person - by person.

This year, more than a dozen migrants from the Mabai prison, some with only 14 years, told Amnesty Yonternational that they had forced them to work on farms or in private homes, clean and load armament in military camps when there wereclashes.

Probably, the most common system is extortion.Yon detention centers, everything has a price: protection, food, medicines and freedom, the most expensive of all.But even paying a ransom does not guarantee freedom, since some migrants are resembled to other detention centers.

"Unfortunately, as a result of the large number of centers that exist and the commodification of migrants, many of them once released are arrested by another group, which implies that they have to pay several bailouts," said the study of the Fiduciary Fund.

At a meeting with the German ambassador to Libya earlier this year, General Al-Mabrouk Abdel-Hafiz, in charge of supervising the Board of Directors of the Fight against the illegal migration of the National Unity Government, the agency in charge of the detention centersOf migrants, he admitted that the conditions under which prisons work are brutal.

He said of himself and the country that they had to be commissioned by impossible job."Libya is no longer a transit country, but a victim who has left alone to face a crisis that other countries have not been able to resolve," he said.(Abdel-Hafiz declined to comment for this report).

When Yo called Al-Ghreetly, director of the Mabai prison, and asked him about the complaints of abuse, he replied abruptly, saying: "No one is mistreated here," and hung me.

The immigrants neighborhood

A few days after my arrival in Libya, Yo visited Gargaresh, the immigrants neighborhood, to talk to ancient prisoners.During World War YoYo, Gargaresh, then called Campo 59, was a military prison led by Yotalian first and by Germans later.

Today is a honeycomb without asphalt and narrow streets dotted with potholes, surrounded by fast food restaurants and mobile phone stores.

The raids carried out by militiamen, in theory to suppress drug trafficking, prostitution and other illegal activities, are everyday.Souumahoro, Candé's friend who was taken to Al Mabani with him when his raft was captured, met with me on the main road and took me to a room without windows occupied by two other migrants.

During a meal, he told me about the time he spent with Candé in jail."Talking about this is very difficult for me," he said.

Yon Al Mabani, they hit migrants for speaking among them, for speaking in their mother tongue or laughing.The worst beatings were given in a place called "Yonsulation Room", an abandoned gas station with a Shell poster hanging at the entrance behind the women's cell, where they held the rebels for days for days.The cell had no bathroom, so there was no choice but to defecate in a corner.

The stench was so strong that the guards got masks upon entering.Yon one of the beatings, the guards tied their detainees to a rope that hung from a steel beam."Yot's not as bad to see how a friend or a man shouts while torture him," Soumahoro told me."But seeing an eighty meter man by lasing a woman ..."

Yon March, Souumahoro organized a hunger strike to protest against the violence exerted by the guards and took him to the isolation room.They hit him several times, hanging from the beam face down."They hang you as if you were clothes," he said.

Several former detainees with whom Yo spoke told me that they had witnessed sexual abuse and humiliations.Hea Keita, a 36 -year -old ivory coast migrant, who was prey in Al Mabai for two months, told me that the guards often took women out of their cell to rape them.

"Women again crying," he told me.One day, two women escaped from Al Mabai, and the guards, in an act of apparently random punishment, grabbed Keita and took her to a nearby office, where they hit her.

The guards used other migrants as collaborators, keeping them divided.Shortly after arriving, Mohammad Soumah, a young man of Guinea-Conakry, volunteered to help in daily tasks and immediately tried to get information: What migrants do they hate? Who are the agitators?

Once the collaboration was formalized, the other prisoners began calling him Mandoob, which in Arabic means "representative".When migrants paid bailouts to get out of jail, Soumah took care of the negotiations.

As a reward, he could sleep outside his cell, in the nursing, or with the chefs who lived in the street in front.At one point, as a gift for their loyalty, the guards allowed him to choose several migrants to release them.Yo could even get out of the complex, although he never moved too much."Yo knew that, if Yo tried to escape, they would find me and beat me a beating," he told me.

Doctors Without Borders visited the prison twice a week.According to their reports, the evidence that abuses were committed there were difficult to ignore: prisoners presented bruises and cuts, avoided visual contact and backed up before strong noise.

Sometimes, humanitarian personnel slipped discreetly despair messages written on the back of the brochures of the World Health Organization.They told the doctors who felt that they were "missing", and the first thing they asked was to communicate to their families that were alive.

During one of those visits, they could not enter Candé's cell because it was very full (they calculated that there were three migrants per square meter) and had to treat migrants medically in the patio.

The overcrowding had caused the spread of tuberculosis, chickenpox, fungal infections and COVYoD-19.They told the doctors the beatings that had suffered the night before and registered fractures, cuts, abrasions and forceful trauma;There was such a battered boy that he couldn't walk.

A few weeks after the arrest of Candé, members of the Yonternational Rescue Committee led to the center the water and the blankets that had requested them.But, a week later, after discovering that the guards had stayed with any of the supplies, they announced that they would no longer carry.

Towards the end of March, Cherif Khalil, a consular official of the Guinea-Conakry Embassy, visited the prison.Candé pretended that he was a citizen of that country and went to the tail to ask if the embassy could help him out."Yo was desperate," Khalil told me.

Yon the middle of the food with Soumahoro, my phone began to sound.When Yo answered, a police officer began shouting at me: “Yot is not allowed to speak with migrants!You can't be in GareSH! ".He told me that, if he didn't leave the neighborhood immediately, they would arrest me.

When Yo returned to my car, Yo was standing there and warned me that, if Yo interviewed more migrants, they would throw me out of the country.From that moment, they did not let my team go far.Yof an old prisoner wanted to tell me his experience, he would have to sneak into my hotel.

In jail

While waiting for the arrival of Ramadan, Candé found ways to spend time sitting in his cell: he tried to learn Arab with Luther and played poker.He reported in his diary a protest of the inmates: "They are sitting in underwear because they also demand that they release them," he wrote.

Candé and Luther nicknamed the guards, generally inspired by the orders they gave them.One called Khamsa Khamsa, or "five, five", which was what shouted during meals to remind migrants who touched a bowl for every five people.

Another guard was called Gamis, which in Arabic means "sitting", because he was in charge of no one stood.Silence controlled that nobody spoke.

At one point, Candé and Luther had to take care of a migrant who seemed to be suffering a psychotic outbreak."Yo was so angry that we had to immobilize it to sleep calmly," Luther wrote.Finally, after Candé's pleas, the guards took him to the hospital, but three days later he returned as disturbed."An incredible situation," Luther wrote.

Towards the end of March, the guards told them that they would not release anyone for Ramadan."This is life in Libya," Luther wrote."We will have to keep patience to enjoy our freedom".But Candé was shattered.

When they first arrested him, he got the Coast Guard not to confiscate the mobile phone.He had hid it, worried that, if they caught him, they would punish him severely.

Yon despair, he decided to run the risk of sending a voice message by WhatsApp to his brothers to explain the situation: “You can't have the phone on a long time.We try to arrive in Yotaly by sea.They took us and brought us back.Now we are locked in jail ".And begged them to try to talk to their father.Then he waited, hoping that they would meet the rescue in some way.

At two o'clock in the morning, a loud noise from cell 4 woke Candé.Several Sudanese prisoners tried to open the main door to escape.

Candé worried that the other prisoners received punishments because of his fault and woke up Souumahoro, who, along with other twelve cellmates, faced the Sudanese."We try to escape several times," Soumahoro told them.

"But it never works..And in the end they beat us up ".As the Sudanese did not attend to reasons, Sohmohoro told Candé to alert the guards, who maneuvered a sand truck to park it against the cell door, blocking it completely.

Then the Sudanese started the pipes from the bathroom wall and threatened them to whom they had intervened.A migrant was wounded in his eye, another fell to the ground with blood sprouting his head.The two groups began to throw objects: shoes, plastic buckets, shampoo bottles, pieces of plaster cardboard.

Candé tried to stay out."Yo'm not going to fight," he told Soumahoro."Yo am the hope of my whole family".

The fight lasted three and a half hours.Some migrants asked for help, shouting: "Open the door!"But the guards laughed and applauded, filming the fight with their phones as if it were a game in a cage."Keep fighting," said one while putting bottles of water through the grid to keep them hydrated."Yof you can kill them, do it".

At half past five in the morning the guards left and returned with semi -automatic rifles.Without warning, they began shooting at the cell through the bath window for ten minutes in a row.

"That looked like a battlefield," Soumahoro told me.Yosmail Douumbouya and Ayouba Fofana, two teenagers from Guinea Conakry, received leg shots.Candé, who had been hiding in the shower during the fight, shot him in the neck.He staggered along the wall, staining it with blood, and then fell to the ground.

Soumohoro tried to stop the bleeding with a piece of cloth.Ten minutes later, Candé died.

The director of the Al-greetly prison, arrived a few hours later, looked through the bars and asked the prisoners to show him the body.

When they put Candé in front of the door, Al-Ghreetly shouted the guards: “What have you done?You can do anything, but not kill them! ”The prisoners refused to deliver the body unless they were released, and the guards, terrified, summoned Mohammad Soumah, his collaborator, to negotiate.Finally, the militia accepted the terms.

"Yo, Soumah, Yo'm going to open this door and go out," he said."But under one condition: you don't disturb when you get out.Do not ride a chaos.Yo'm going to the front run with you to the exit ".Before nine in the morning, the guards took positions near the departure with the weapons raised.

Soumah opened the cell door and asked the three hundred migrants to follow him in an Yondian row, slowly and without speaking, until the exit.Many drivers who at that time were heading to work leaned the march to look, speechless, the flow of migrants who left the enclosure and merged into the streets of Tripoli.

Surveillance

After six days in Tripoli, Yo started together all the pieces of Candé's death.Against government wishes, we interview dozens of migrants, officials and humanitarian workers.Yo had the feeling that the hotel staff and that the ‘security guards’ that we had hired informed the authorities of all our movements.

On Sunday, May 23, shortly before eight in the afternoon, Yo was sitting at the hotel talking with my wife, who was in Washington D.C.When Yo heard a blow to the door.When opening, a dozen armed men broke into the room, and pointing to me with a gun on my forehead, they shouted at me: "Ty yourself to the ground!"

They encaled me and beat me up: they kicked me, they hit me and trampled my head.They left me with two broken ribs, blood in my urine and damaged kidneys.Then they took me out of the room.

At that time, my team was going to dinner in the immediate vicinity of our hotel.A white truck crashed with a car that was in front of them, blocking the road, and half a dozen masked men and armed with semi -automatic jumped from the vehicle.

They took the driver from the truck and beaten with a gun, my colleagues were forced their eyes and took them.They led everyone to the interrogations room of a clandestine prison.Yo could hear how they threatened others."You are a dog!" One of them shouted to our photographer, Pierre Kattar, while crossing his face.

To the woman in my team, Mea Dols de Jong, a Dutch filmmaker, whispered sexual threats and said things like "Do you want a Libyan boyfriend?".A few hours later, the belts, rings and watches were removed and locked us in cells.

Later, through satellite images, Yo have discovered that we were locked in a small secret prison 700 meters from the Yotalian embassy.

Our captors told us that they were part of the "Libya Yontelligence Service", which in theory is an agency of the National Unity Government, the Government recognized by the UN that also supervises Mabai, but is directed by the militia Brigade Al-Nawasi.Our interrogators boasted of having worked under Gaddafi orders.

One of them, who could talk in English, said that had spent time in Colorado in a training program led by the US National Security Department.UU.To administer prisons.

They locked me in an isolation cell, in which there was a toilet, a shower, a foam mattress lying on the floor and a camera mounted on the roof.Through a small rectangular slot, the guards gave us cans of yellow rice and water bottles.

Every day they took me to a room where they questioned me up to five hours in a row.“We know that he works for C.Yo.A.”, He told me about them."Here in Libya, espionage is punished with death".

Sometimes they put a gun at the table or pointed at my head.For my captors, the same steps I had taken to protect my team became proof of my guilt.

Why did they carry tracking devices?Why did they hide cash and copies of their passports in the shoes?Why had two “secret recording devices” in the backpack (an Apple Watch and a Gopro) and a bundle of folios entitled “Secret Document” (an emergency contact list to which, in fact, I titled “Document ofsecurity")?

Being a journalist did not contribute to my defense, but became a secondary crime.My captors told me that it was illegal to interview immigrants about the abuse suffered in Al Mabani.

"Why do you want to embarrass Libya?" They asked me.They repeated again and again: "You have killed George Floyd" (the young African -American woman killed by the police in Mineapolis on May 25, 2020).

With hope of escaping, I raised the toilet lid and dismantled some of the pipes to extract a piece of metal with which to unravel the window bars.At one point, I began to give small blows to the wall of my cell, and Kattar, the photographer, replied, which reassured me.

My wife, who had heard the beginning of my kidnapping on the phone, warned the State Department.Together with the Dutch diplomatic service, they pressed the president of the Government of the National Lebanese Unity to release us.

On one occasion, they took us out of the cells to record a video like "Proof of life".Our jailers told us that we washed the blood and dirt of the face and that we sat on a sofa in front of a table, in which they had put soft drinks and cakes."Sounds," they told us, and they asked us to tell the camera that they were treating us with humanity."Talk.It seemed normal ".

After being captive for five days, the militia agreed to let us go.They asked us to sign "confession" documents written in Arabic with a letterhead of the "Department of the Fight against Hostility".When we asked what the documents said, they laughed.

Experience offered us a small hint of how the indefinite arrest system in Libya works.I often thought about Candé, all the time he was imprisoned and in how much more cruel his outcome was.On May 28 they took us out of our cells and escorted us towards the door.

But when we were approaching the exit, one of the interrogators put my hand on my chest."You can go," he said."But this stays".Everyone stared at.Then he laughed and said he was joking.They led us to an airplane and took us out of the country, formally deported for having committed the crime of "informing about migrants".

Pain

In the weeks after Candé's death, the liberated prisoners quickly ran their voice over what happened.The information reached the ears of Ousmane Sane, the unofficial consular representative of Guinea Bissau in Libya, 44 years old.

Sane was with bucket, Candé's uncle, to the police police station that is close to Al Mabani, where they were given a copy of the autopsy report.The documents were anonymous because the authorities did not even know what Candé was called.

They also hinted that he had died in a fight, which enraged Sane."It wasn't a fight," he said."It was a bullet".Later, they visited the local hospital to identify Candé's body.They took him on a metal stretcher, wrapped in a white fabric barely withdrawal to show his face.

In the following days, they moved by Tripoli to settle Candé's debts, in which he had already incurred dead: 166 euros for the hospital stay, 16 euros for the white sheet and burial clothes, 209 for the new burial.

Candé's family learned of his death two days later.Samba, his father, told me that he could barely sleep or eat: "sadness weighs me a lot".

Hava, his wife, had already given birth for the third time, a girl named Cadjato who is now two years old, and told me that he would not get married until the crying was exhausted."My heart is broken".Jacaro hoped the police arrest his brother's murderers."I don't think they do," he said."It has gone in every way".

The conditions of the crops in their region have worsened because the floods are greater and have one less worker.As a result, Bobo, Candé's younger brother, will probably try to travel to Europe."What else can I do?".

Al-Ghreetly was suspended following Candé's death, but a few weeks later he was restored in his position at the head of Al Mabani.

For almost three months, doctors without borders refused to enter that prison.Beatrice Lau, his head of Mission in Libya, wrote: "The persistent pattern of violent incidents and serious damage inflicted into refugees and migrants, as well as the risk of the security of our staff, has reached an unacceptable level".

The organization resumed their activity after the Libyan authorities guaranteed that there would be no more violence and that their teams could have free access to the facilities.But in October, the Libyan authorities and the Zintan militia arrested 54.000 migrants en Gargaresh y enviaron a miles de ellos a Al Mabani.

After a week, the guards opened fire against some prisoners who tried to escape.They killed six.

After the death of Candé, José Sabadell, the EU ambassador, asked to open a formal investigation, but never carried out.(Sabadell did not respond to my request for comments).Europe's commitment to the anti -immigration programs implemented by Libya remains unwavering.

El año pasado, Yotalia renovó su Memorando de Entendimiento con Libia y desde marzo ha invertido otros 3,5 millones de euros en la Guardia Costera.The European Commission has pledged to develop a “new and modernized maritime control center and buy three more ships.

The number of migrants arriving in Europe continues to decrease, but the mortality rate of those that cross the Mediterranean has increased forty percent since 2017.

On April 12, after five in the afternoon, a group of Orantes, Balde, Sane and about twenty more people went to the Bir Al-osta Milad cemetery to attend the funeral of Candé.The cemetery occupies about 32.000 m2 between an electrical substation and two department stores.

Most dead migrants in Libya are buried there.The cemetery hosts about 10.000 tombs, many of them without marking.The attendees prayed aloud while Candé's body descended to a shallow hole, no more than five meters deep, dug in the sand.

They covered the grave with six rectangular stones and poured a layer of cement.Someone asked if any of the attendees had money from Candé to give it to his family;nobody answered.In unison everyone praised God.Then, one of them scribbled with a stick Candé's name in the wet cement.

*Yoan Urbina es director de The Outlaw Ocean Project, una organización sin ánimo de lucro con sede en Washington DC dedicada al periodismo de investigación en torno a los crímenes contra los derechos humanos y mediambientales que ocurren en los océanos".The website is www.Theoutlawocean.com