On May 23, just before 8 pm, I was sitting in my hotel room, talking on the phone with my wife, when I heard a knock at the door. I was in Tripoli a few days ago to investigate the story of Aliou Candé. The young migrant from Guinea-Bissau had been intercepted by the Libyan Coast Guard in February this year as he tried to reach Europe through the Mediterranean Sea and was sent to one of the worst prisons for migrants in Libya: Al Mabani.
Libya has been an effective, albeit brutal, partner in Europe’s efforts to stop the flow of African migrants to its shores. Europe has funded the work of the Libyan Coast Guard to capture migrants in the Mediterranean and has done nothing as tens of thousands of captured migrants are brought into dire conditions within the dozen or more migrant prisons that Libya has created as part of its efforts on behalf of Europe.
Al Mabani emerged in 2021 as one of the most outrageous of these prisons — a place overrun with violence, neglect and a variety of crimes ranging from extortion and forced labor to murder.
Once in Libya, three colleagues and I spent a week investigating the prison and what happened to Candé inside it. We launched a drone over the facility, capturing alarming images of ill-treatment, and interviewed other migrants who had been with Candé in Al Mabani.
We were afraid that we were being monitored all the time, and I had the distinct impression that the hotel staff and our private security guards were reporting our movements to the authorities. That night, when I opened the door after hearing the knocking, a dozen armed men entered, and one of them, pointing a gun at my forehead, shouted, “Down on the floor!” They put a hood over my head and punched and kicked me. Then they dragged me out of the room.
Al Mabani was created earlier this year under the supervision of Emad Al-Tarabulsi, a senior leader of a militia that calls itself the Public Security Agency. The militia has ties to the Zintan tribe, which helped topple Muammar Gaddafi. Today, the group is aligned with the UN-recognized Government of National Unity, and Tarabulsi briefly served as deputy chief of intelligence.
He built the prison in a militia-controlled corner of the city and appointed Noureddine Al-Ghreetly, a soft-spoken commander, to run it.” Tarabulsi did not respond to requests for comment.
Previously, Al-Ghreetly had supervised a migrant prison called Tajoura on a military base on the eastern outskirts of Tripoli. In July 2019, during the last outbreak of the civil war, a bomb hit the military base, destroying the hangars where the migrants were being held. More than 50 were killed, including six children. Most of the survivors ended up in Al Mabani.
In 2015, the European Union (EU) created the Emergency Trust Fund for Africa, which has already spent nearly $6 billion. Supporters argue that the program provides financial assistance to developing countries, but much of its work involves pressuring African countries to adopt tougher immigration restrictions and fund the agencies that enforce them.
In 2018, Niger authorities reportedly sent a “shopping list” requesting donations of cars, planes and helicopters in exchange for help in promoting anti-immigrant policies. The money from the fund is distributed at the discretion of the executive branch of the EU, the European Commission, and is not subject to scrutiny by Parliament. A Trust Fund spokesperson told me: “Our programs aim to save lives, protect those in need and combat human trafficking and smuggling of migrants.”
In 2017, Italy, supported by EU funds, signed a memorandum of understanding with Libya affirming “the resolute determination to cooperate in identifying urgent solutions to the issue of illegal migrants crossing Libya to reach Europe by sea”.
The Trust Fund has earmarked $500 million for Libya’s attack on migration. Marco Minniti, then Italy’s interior minister, said in 2017 that “what Italy has done in Libya is a model for dealing with migratory flows without erecting borders or barbed wire barriers.” Salah Marghani, Libya’s Minister of Justice from 2012 to 2014, told me that the program’s goal is clear: “Make Libya the bad guy.” “Make Libya the cover of your policies, while Europe’s good humans say they offer money to help make this hellish system safer.” Minniti declined to comment.
In its initial agreement with Libya, Italy promised to help finance and secure the operation to detain migrants. Today, European authorities insist that they don’t directly fund the locals.
The Trust Fund’s expenditures are murky, but its spokesperson told me that the Trust sends money only through UN agencies and international NGOs that provide “vital support to detained migrants and refugees”, including “health and psychosocial care, cash assistance and non-food items”.
The EU admits that the arrests of migrants are brutal. The Trust Fund spokesperson also said that “the situation in these centers is unacceptable.” “The current system of arbitrary detention must end.” Last year, Josep Borrell, vice president of the European Commission, said that “the decision to detain migrants arbitrarily is the sole responsibility of the Libyan government.”
For Tineke Strik, Member of the European Parliament, this does not exempt Europe from the responsibility: “If the EU did not finance the Libyan Coast Guard and its resources, there would be no interception and there would be no referral to these horrible detention centers.” She also pointed out that the EU sends funds to the Government of National Unity, whose directorate to combat illegal migration oversees the detention centers. He also argued that even if the EU does not pay the construction of facilities or the salaries of snipers, the money indirectly supports much of its operation.
The Trust Fund buys the boats that capture migrants, the buses that take them to prisons, and the SUVs that chase them when they flee. EU-funded UN agencies have built showers and toilets in several of the facilities and pay for blankets, clothes and hygiene products that migrants receive when they arrive. When detainees fall ill, ambulances purchased by the Trust Fund take them to hospital. And when they die, EU money pays for the bags that store the corpses and training in handling the bodies. Some of these efforts make prisons more humane, but together they also help maintain this brutal system, which exists in large part because of EU policies that send migrants back to Libya.
These arrests, in addition to fulfilling a promise to Europe, also earn money for the Libyan militias who run them. One of the easiest scams is “aid diversion,” whereby militias divert money or supplies from humanitarian groups to detainees. In addition, the country’s laws allow unauthorized foreigners, regardless of age, to be forced to work in the country without pay. A Libyan citizen can fetch migrants from a prison for a fee, become their “guardian” and supervise their work for a specified period of time.
In 2017, CNN broadcast footage of a slave market in Libya where migrants were sold to work in agriculture; bids started at 400 dinars (R$500 at the most current quote) per person. This year, more than a dozen migrants from various places of detention, some as young as 14, told Amnesty International they were forced to work on farms or in private homes and to clean and carry weapons in military camps.
Also under Libyan law, foreigners — including economic migrants, asylum seekers and victims of illegal trafficking — can be detained indefinitely, without access to a lawyer. As with Candé. And how it happened to me and my team.
I hadn’t been the only one to be kidnapped that night. My team had been intercepted on my way to dinner near the hotel. Half a dozen masked and armed men blocked the van carrying it, hit the driver and blindfolded my colleagues. We were all taken to an interrogation room in a secret prison, where I was punched again in the head and ribs. They also threatened my team.
“You’re a dog!” one of them yelled at our photographer, Pierre Kattar, slapping him in the face. They whispered sexual threats to the only woman on the team, Dutch filmmaker Mea Dols de Jong: “Want a Libyan boyfriend?” After a few hours, they removed belts, rings and watches and put us in cells.
I’ve since found out—by comparing satellite images with what little we’ve seen of the surrounding area—that we’ve been held in a secret prison hundreds of meters from the Italian embassy. The captors told us they were part of the Libyan Intelligence Service, an agency of the Government of National Unity, which also oversees Al Mabani, although it has ties to a militia called the Al-Nawasi Brigade.
I was placed in an isolated cell, with a toilet, a shower, a foam mattress, and a camera mounted on the ceiling. Every day I was questioned in an interrogation room for hours on end. “We know you work for the CIA,” said one man. “Here in Libya, espionage is punishable by death.” Sometimes he would put a gun on the table or point it at my head.
To my captors, the steps I had taken to protect myself and my team became proof of my guilt. Why did they wear tracking devices and carry cash and copies of their passports in their shoes? Why did I have two “Secret Recording Devices” in my backpack (an Apple Watch and a GoPro) along with a package of papers titled “Secret Document” (an emergency contact list titled “Security Document”)?
The fact that I was a journalist was less of a defense and more of a minor crime. My captors told me it was illegal to interview migrants about abuse in Al Mabani. “Why are you trying to embarrass Libya?” they asked. More and more desperate, I dismantled part of the bathroom plumbing to try to loosen the window bars. I would also knock on my cell wall and hear Kattar, the photographer, knock back, which I found somehow comforting.
Luckily, my wife had heard my kidnapping over the phone and alerted the US State Department. Along with the Dutch Foreign Service, the agency began to put pressure on the National Unity Government to release us. At one point, we were taken out of the cells to record a video as “proof of life”. The jailers told us to wash the blood and dirt off our faces and sat us on a sofa in front of a table with sodas and sweets. We were told to smile and instructed to say that we were being treated humanely. “Speak and act normally.”
After days, the militia agreed to let us go. We were required to sign “confession” documents written in Arabic on the Department for Combating Hostility letterhead and with the name of Major General Hussein Muhammad Al-A’ib. When we asked what the documents said, our captors laughed. They took our computers, hard drives, phones, money, film equipment and my wedding band.
The experience — profoundly frightening but mercifully short — offered a glimpse into the world of indefinite detention in Libya. I often thought of Candé’s incarceration, which lasted for months, and its terrible result.
This is the third article in a series produced by The Outlaw Ocean Project, whose director is Ian Urbina, in partnership with leaf. The special examines the EU’s collaboration with Libya in detaining migrants trying to reach Europe. The last chapter, to be published in Folha’s online version on the 31st, details the last days of Aliou Candé’s detention. The Outlaw Ocean Project, a Washington-based nonprofit news organization, focuses on environmental and human rights issues that occur at sea.
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