Bir al-Osta Milad Cemetery where Aliou Candé and other dead migrants are buried. (Photo: Pierre Kattar / The Outlaw Ocean Project) 
The Libyan Coast Guard is doing the European Union’s dirty work, capturing migrants as they attempt to cross the Mediterranean into Europe and throwing them in secret prisons.
There, they are extorted, abused and sometimes killed. An investigation into the death of Aliou Candé, a young farmer and father from Guinea-Bissau, puts the Outlaw Ocean team in the cross-hairs of Libya’s violent and repressive regime.
In this three-part series, we take you inside the walls of one of the most dangerous prisons in a lawless regime where the world’s forgotten migrants languish.
Episode 2 highlights
- The EU has claimed it plays no role in this migrant crisis, even as it provides boats, buses, petrol — even the tablets the Libyans use to count their captives.
- Once captured and counted, those migrants are often held in a network of secretive prisons run by competing militias, where exploitation, abuse and death are common. They are also routinely “rented” as everything from farm labour to soldiers in battle.
- Aliou Candé was sent to a prison where he died at the hands of prison guards while trying to protect himself in a melee. “I’m not going to fight. I’m the hope of my entire family,” he said. DM