46 THENEWYORKER,DECEMBER6, 2021
to negotiate. Eventually, the militia
agreed to free the migrants in exchange
for the body. Soumah told them, “I,
Soumah, will open this door and you
guys will get out. I will be in front of
you, running with you until the exit.”
Just before 9 a.m., guards took up po-
sitions near the gate, guns raised. Sou-
mah opened the cell door and told the
three hundred migrants to follow him
out of the prison, single file, without
talking. Morning commuters slowed
to gawk at the migrants as they left
the compound and dispersed through
the streets of Tripoli.
B
y my eighth day in Tripoli, my
team and I were piecing together
the details of Candé’s death. We had
interviewed dozens of migrants, offi-
cials, and aid workers. I had the distinct
impression that the hotel staff and our
private security guards were report-
ing our movements to the authorities.
On Sunday, May 23rd, shortly be-
fore 8 p.m., I was sitting in my hotel
room, on the phone with my wife,
when there was a knock on the door.
As I opened it, a dozen armed men
burst in. One held a gun to my fore-
head and yelled, “Get on the floor!”
They placed a hood over my head,
kicked and punched me, and stepped
on my face, leaving me with two bro-
ken ribs, blood in my urine, and dam-
age to my kidneys. Then they dragged
me from the room.
My research team was on their way
to dinner near the hotel; their driver
spotted cars following them and turned
back. Several cars blocked the road,
and armed men in masks leaped out.
They took my team’s driver from the
van and pistol-whipped him, then
blindfolded my colleagues and drove
them away. We were all taken to an
interrogation room at a black site,
where I was punched again in the head
and ribs. Still hooded, I could hear
the men menacing the others. “You
are a dog!” one yelled at our photog-
rapher, Pierre Kattar, striking him
across the face. They whispered sex-
ual threats to the female member of
our team, Mea Dols de Jong, a Dutch
filmmaker, saying, “Do you want a
Libyan boyfriend?” After a few hours,
they removed our belts and jewelry
and placed us in cells.
I’ve since discovered—by compar-
ing satellite imagery with the little we
glimpsed of the surrounding area—
that we were held at a secret jail sev-
eral hundred yards from the Italian
Embassy. Our captors told us that they
were part of the Libyan Intelligence
Service, nominally an agency of the
National Unity government, which
also oversees Al Mabani, though it has
ties to a militia called the Al-Nawasi
Brigade. Our interrogators bragged
that they had worked together under
Qaddafi. One, who spoke conversa-
tional English, claimed that he had
spent time in Colorado at a U.S.-
government-run training program for
prison administration.
I was placed in an isolation cell,
which contained a toilet, a shower, a
foam mattress, and a ceiling-mounted
camera. Guards passed me yellow rice
and bottles of water through a slot in
the door. Every day, I was questioned
in an interrogation room for hours at
a time. “We know you work for the
C.I.A.,” a man kept telling me. “Here
in Libya, spying is punished by death.”
Sometimes he put a gun on the table
or pointed it at my head. To my cap-
tors, the steps I had taken to safeguard
my team became proof of my guilt.
Why would we wear tracking devices
and carry copies of our passports in
our shoes? Why did I have two “se-
cret recording devices” in my back-
pack (an Apple Watch and a GoPro),
along with a packet of papers titled
“Secret Document” (a list of emer-
gency contacts that was actually la-
belled “Security Document”)?
The fact that I was a journalist was
less a defense than a secondary crime.
My captors told me that it was ille-
gal to interview migrants about abuses
at Al Mabani. “Why are you trying
“ You’ll build another bug collection in no time.”
• •
