THENEWYORKER,DECEMBER6, 2021 45
In the weeks after Candé’s arrival,
members of another aid group brought
water and blankets that the facility had
requested. But, after discovering that
guards had kept some of the supplies
for themselves, they decided that they
would no longer assist Al Mabani. Near
the end of March, Cherif Khalil, a con-
sular officer from the Embassy of
Guinea Conakry, visited the prison.
Candé, pretending to be from Guinea
Conakry, asked if the Embassy could
help him, but Khalil was powerless.
“He was desperate,” Khalil told me.
Halfway through my meal with Sou-
mahoro, my phone rang. It was a po-
lice officer. “You are not allowed to be
talking to migrants,” he screamed at
me. “You cannot be in Gargaresh.” He
told me that if I didn’t leave immedi-
ately I would be arrested. When I re-
turned to my car, the police officer was
standing there. He said that if I spoke
to any more migrants I would be thrown
out of the country. After that, my team
and I weren’t allowed to venture far
from our hotel.
A
s Candé sat in his cell, waiting for
Ramadan, he and Luther passed
the time by playing dominoes. Luther
wrote in his journal of a protest by fe-
male inmates: “They are in underwear
and sitting on the floor because they
also demand to be released.” He and
Candé called the guards nicknames
based on the orders they barked. One
was known as Khamsa Khamsa, Ara-
bic for “five, five,” which he yelled during
meals to remind migrants that five peo-
ple had to share each bowl. Another
guard, called Gamis, or “sit down,” in-
sured that no one stood. Keep Quiet
policed the chatter. At one point, Candé
and Luther cared for a migrant who
had sustained a blow to the head during
a beating and seemed to be suffering a
mental break, thrashing and scream-
ing. “He was so mad,” Luther wrote,
that they had to restrain him “so that
we could sleep in peace.” Eventually,
the guards took the detainee to a hos-
pital, but a few weeks later he returned,
as disturbed as ever. “Unbelievable sit-
uation,” Luther wrote.
Near the end of March, the migrants
learned that they would not be freed
during Ramadan. Luther wrote, “This
is how life is in Libya. We will still have
to be patient to enjoy our freedom.”
But Candé seemed increasingly des-
perate. When he was first taken into
custody, the Coast Guard had some-
how failed to confiscate his cell phone.
He had kept it hidden, fearing that he
would be severely punished if caught
with it. After the Ramadan rumor was
dispelled, however, he sent a voice mes-
sage to his brothers over WhatsApp,
attempting to explain the situation:
“We were trying to get to Italy by water.
They caught us and brought us back.
Now we are locked in prison.... You
can’t keep the phone on too long here.”
He begged them, “Find a way to call
our father.” Then he waited, hoping
that they would scrape together the
ransom.
At 2 a.m. on April 8th, Candé awoke
to a noise: several Sudanese detainees
were trying to pry open the door of Cell
No. 4 and escape. Candé, worried that
all the inmates would be punished, asked
Soumahoro what to do. Soumahoro
went with a dozen others to confront
the Sudanese. “We’ve tried to break out
several times before,” Soumahoro told
them. “It never worked. We were just
beaten.” The Sudanese wouldn’t listen,
and Soumahoro told another detainee
to alert the guards, who backed a sand
truck up against the cell door.
The Sudanese yanked iron pipes from
the bathroom wall and began swinging
them at those who had intervened. One
migrant was hit in the eye; another fellto the ground, blood gushing from his
head. The groups began pelting each
other with shoes, buckets, shampoo bot-
tles, and pieces of plasterboard. Candé
told Soumahoro, “I’m not going to fight.
I’m the hope of my entire family.” The
brawling lasted for three and a half
hours. Some migrants shouted for as-
sistance, yelling, “Open the door!” In-
stead, the guards laughed and cheered,
filming the fight with their phones
through the grille. “Keep fighting,” one
said, passing in water bottles to keep
the brawlers hydrated. “If you can kill
them, do it.”
But at 5:30 A.M. the guards left and
came back with semi-automatic rifles.
Without warning, they fired into the
cell through the bathroom window for
ten minutes. “It sounded like a battle-
field,” Soumahoro told me. Two teen-
agers from Guinea Conakry, Ismail
Doumbouya and Ayouba Fofana, were
hit in the leg. Candé, who had been
hiding in the shower during the fight,
was struck in the neck. He staggered
along the wall, streaking blood, then
fell to the ground. Soumahoro tried to
slow the bleeding with a piece of cloth.
Candé died within minutes.
Ghreetly arrived several hours later
and shouted at the guards, “What have
you done? You can do anything to
them, you just can’t kill them!” The
migrants refused to hand over Can-
dé’s body, and the panicked guards
summoned Soumah, the collaborator,