In​ 2019, I made several visits to Dhar al-Jebel, a Libyan detention centre better known as Zintan, after the nearest town. Around a thousand migrants, most of them Eritreans, were being held there indefinitely. Nearly all had been arrested by the Libyan coastguard in 2017, the year it began to receive EU funding to stop migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean, which was still a crime under a Libyan law dating from the Gaddafi era. After being brought back to shore, the detainees had been shuttled around Tripoli, until fighting between militias in the capital convinced the authorities and UN agencies to move them to the mountain hinterland south of the city, where they remained out of sight – and out of mind – for months, even years.

The detention centre at Zintan used to be a camp where children were drilled in Gaddafi’s Green Book. There were kids among the migrants I saw there. One of them, Even, was 15 years old. I took a photograph of him squatting in front of a line of detainees while Libyan guards were supervising food distribution. On his right was his friend Saeed, a year older and an epilepsy sufferer. Even looked after him. On his left was 29-year-old Pace, one of the group’s informal leaders, who had a hand on Even’s arm. Even was young enough to warrant protection, but he was also precocious, a leader in his own right, who could offer support to others.

I asked Even how he had ended up in Zintan. He told me his family had left the local Orthodox congregation in Eritrea and joined a US-imported Pentecostal church, which was frowned on by the country’s authoritarian nationalist regime. His father was arrested and died in jail when Even was seven. He dropped out of primary school to help his mother, who worked in a shop. Like all young Eritreans, he knew that one day he would be called up for mandatory national service and ‘end up in the army, or in prison, or be killed’. In 2016, aged twelve, he decided to leave the country with three friends of the same age. He told his mother he was going to school and began the long journey to Sudan. ‘I was a kid,’ he told me. ‘I didn’t understand what could happen to me. My goal was just to stay safe in Sudan. But I realised I wouldn’t have a chance to study and started thinking of Europe.’ His next stop was Egypt, where he found work in a clothing factory. He met Saeed there, and took him under his wing.

In January 2018, Saeed and Even planned to board a boat in Alexandria organised by Eritrean smugglers and supposedly bound for Italy. It was a scam. Instead, they were forced to march for twelve hours across the border to Libya. When Saeed fainted, the other migrants carried him. In Libya they were driven to the remote western town of Bani Walid, a hub for traffickers. Thousands of migrants were held in hangars around the town. In Bani Walid, Even and Saeed found out that the sponsors of their boat had sold them to an Eritrean trafficker known as Knife, who worked for a local Libyan kingpin. Knife is said to have been granted asylum in Canada, where he now owns a barber shop. In Libya he made a living from torturing migrants in order to extract money from their families. ‘Every morning you’re on a phone calling your family. You tell them: I’m dying, send me the money,’ Even told me. His mother sold her jewellery to pay the ransom of $4500. He calculated that since leaving Eritrea three years earlier, he had shelled out $11,500 to people smugglers and traffickers.

The ransom included payment for crossing the Mediterranean. On the night of 30 June, Even got on a ‘plastic’ (an inflatable dinghy) at Khoms, east of Tripoli. There were around 120 passengers, mostly fellow Eritreans. After several hours, the helmsman – a South Sudanese migrant picked by the smuggler and offered free passage in exchange for steering the boat – called the smuggler on the satellite phone, one of the few accessories smugglers regularly supply to small boats. Based on their GPS position, the smuggler said, they had now left the Libyan Search and Rescue (SAR) zone and were in the Maltese or Italian zone.

Since Gaddafi was overthrown in 2011, Libya has been controlled by rival armed groups. In 2015, the UN endorsed the Government of National Accord (GNA), but not all the militias signed up to it. Those that did made it possible for the GNA to exercise nominal rule over Libya’s north-west coast, including Tripoli. In December 2017, the GNA notified the UN’s International Maritime Organisation (IMO) that it had arrived at a definition of Libya’s SAR zone in the Mediterranean. Its proposal was confirmed by the IMO on 27 June 2018, three days before Even got on the boat. Libya’s SAR zone now extended from the coast to a horizontal line drawn midway across the Mediterranean on the 34°20’ northern parallel. South of this line, the Libyan authorities were to co-ordinate rescues, and the Libyan coastguard was empowered to intercept migrants and return them to Libya, despite repeated warnings from the UN and the EU that Libya was not a safe place for people rescued at sea.

The smuggler who had organised Even’s crossing assured the helmsman that they were north of 34°20’, theoretically beyond the reach of the Libyan coastguard. In the late afternoon, the dinghy began to deflate, the hull broke up and the pump failed. The passengers took off their clothes and tried to use them to bail out water. They called the Italian Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre. The MRCC replied that help was on its way. An Italian military helicopter circled above the boat for about two hours. The passengers waved to the pilot with their sodden clothes. As the sea grew rougher, they called again. This time, a Libyan operator answered the call: the Italians had transferred it to the Libyan coastguard. Towards sunset the migrants saw a metallic grey boat approaching.

The Zuwarah, a fast patrol vessel built in Italy, had been given to Libya in 2009, a year after a Friendship Treaty was signed by Gaddafi and Silvio Berlusconi. As part of the deal, Italy agreed to pay €5 billion to Libya, to be used largely for blocking migrant departures. The following year, Law 19/2010 criminalised the entry and exit of migrants to and from Libya. After Gaddafi’s fall, transits surged. In 2016, 165,000 migrants crossed the Mediterranean from Libya to Italy. Rome and Brussels were panicked. In February 2017, Italy updated its Friendship Treaty with the GNA and the EU endorsed the new deal, which gave €90 million towards ending migrant departures from Libya. At least €14 million was earmarked for the delivery and maintenance of more than thirty patrol vessels. Older vessels such as the Zuwarah, sent back to Italy for maintenance in 2012, were returned to Libya in May 2017. When asked why so many patrol vessels were being deployed to Libya, EU officials said (or complained) that the Libyan coastguard was struggling with maintenance, which left its seaworthy vessels stretched beyond capacity.

As the Zuwarah approached, Even could see that it was full of migrants who had been intercepted earlier that day. The deck was heaving with people; some of them were sitting along the deck rails, legs dangling above the sea. At first the helmsman of Even’s boat refused to stop, but the Zuwarah circled, whipping up the sea in its wake, and the migrants begged the helmsman to cut the outboard motor. Moments later, according to a photo taken by one of the coastguards from the bridge of the Zuwarah (and posted on Facebook), the dinghy had been brought alongside. The migrants look resigned. ‘We told them we were happy to be rescued but as soon as we boarded their boat, they beat us,’ Even said. ‘The Libyan coastguard, as soon as they see you, they beat you. For them, it’s like saying hi.’ The guards told them to forget Europe: ‘You Blacks don’t have brains! You’ll die here in Libya.’ They also seized the outboard motor and remaining fuel before slashing the inflatable collar of the dinghy so that it couldn’t be used again. There was hardly any room on the Zuwarah. Even found space to crouch under a console in the control room.

That night the wind got up and waves began to break across the deck. There was shouting: some West Africans sitting by the deck rail had gone overboard. Now it was the Libyan coastguard’s turn to call the MRCC. A vessel appeared in the distance: the Asso Ventinove, one of a fleet of large tugs owned by Augusta Offshore, a Neapolitan shipping company that supplies a number of Libyan offshore oil rigs (their impressive silhouettes and the gas flares they emit allow migrants at sea to locate their positions). The Asso 29 took all the migrants off the Zuwarah and brought it under tow. The captain told them to settle down: ‘We’ll bring you to Italy. Sleep and drink.’ Exhausted but hopeful, Even slept. When he woke at dawn on 2 July, he saw the buildings of a coastal city a few miles away. The migrants thought they might be approaching the Italian coast, but one of the Eritreans recognised the city as Tripoli and advised everyone to hide. Some of the migrants tried to stow away in dumpsters or smaller garbage bins; Even hid in an oil barrel. ‘We didn’t realise they had cameras,’ he said. Libyan guards on the Asso 29 moved the migrants – at least 262 of them, from sixteen countries – to the Ras Jadir, a sister ship of the Zuwarah, and put them ashore in Tripoli. Again, they were beaten and mocked by soldiers, who shouted in Arabic: ‘There’s no Europe! No hope! You’ll die in Libya!’

The law of the sea isn’t complicated. Any vessel in distress should be attended to by the nearest ship, whether military, commercial or a rescue boat. The survivors should then be taken to the nearest ‘port of safety’. Since Libya is not safe, passengers should be taken to Italy or Malta. Yet by 2018, Italian authorities had started to delay designating a port to both NGO and commercial vessels that were carrying rescued migrants. For private shipping companies, rescue meant losing time and money, and captains began to think twice before changing course to aid a vessel in distress. More discreetly, the Italian and Maltese authorities encouraged those who rescued migrants to return them to Libya. Arrivals in Italy and Malta from Libya dropped from 165,000 in 2016 to 7000 in 2019, while the rate of return to Libya under the auspices of the Libyan coastguard (and to a lesser extent boats such as the Asso 29) rose from 8 per cent to 50 per cent. The loss of life at sea from attempted crossings also rose, despite the EU Commission repeating that its primary aim was to save lives.

Migrants who disembark in Libya are usually held in detention centres. By mid-2018, the UN estimated that around ten thousand detainees were being held in twenty or so ‘official’ facilities, including more than 1700 in Tareq al-Matar in Tripoli. This is where Even and most of those on the Asso 29 ended up. As well as the Libyan coastguard, Brussels funded UN agencies to provide relief in detention centres and at disembarkation spots. A picture of Even’s disembarkation, taken by an officer for the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, shows him standing in the middle of a crowd of seated migrants. He is speaking to a UNHCR officer and appears to be pointing to something on the document the man is holding. ‘I was translating for the others,’ he told me. ‘They took our names, then disappeared.’ Staff from the International Medical Corps, the UNHCR’s medical subcontractor, were present too, and according to Even, did nothing for the migrants who had suffered burns because of a fuel leak in their dinghy. The UNHCR team, and their colleagues from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), distributed water, food and blankets. Women and families with young children were put on buses to Tareq al-Sikka detention centre, men and boys to Tareq al-Matar. When they got there, money and mobile phones were confiscated, though some migrants managed to hide their phones. UNHCR officials sometimes brought blankets or food, which the guards took to sell. ‘They don’t want you to leave, you are good money to the detention centre’s bosses,’ Even said. When people died, he told me, ‘they threw them in the trash.’

Tareq al-Matar was so full that Even slept in a large pit which was being dug for new latrines. In September 2018, hostilities erupted between Tripoli militias. Nine of the Eritrean detainees were injured by stray bullets. During a lull, the director opened the gates and let the detainees leave. They started wandering the streets, not knowing where to go. After an hour, militias began rounding them up: eight hundred Eritreans were transferred from the city to Zintan. During the first nine months, they were locked in a large warehouse, and then moved out into smaller buildings. An outbreak of tuberculosis killed at least 22. Among the first to die was Josi, a 25-year-old survivor of the Asso 29. His picture was circulated by detainees who had managed to keep hold of a phone and were trying to raise the alarm. IOM and IMC doctors held a clinic in the warehouse, but consultations were rare.

When I returned to Zintan in 2020, Even had left. The calls for help may have made a difference: some migrants had been taken to hospital, including Even’s friend Saeed. Even accompanied him, and afterwards they refused to go back into detention. They fought their way out of the hospital and ran away. When I called Even, he told me he had found work as a cleaner in Tripoli and was going to try to cross again. I couldn’t meet him, he explained, because he was in a smuggler’s house waiting for a boat. He had already paid the fare of $1500. In the meantime, he and his companions were using dedicated apps to track vessels that might rescue them. The Asso 29 appeared on one of them. In April 2020, it refused to take on board 82 migrants, who were later rescued by the NGO vessel Alan Kurdi. The following month, enforcing a new strategy, Italy seized the Alan Kurdi, followed two days later by the Aita Mari, the last NGO vessel then operating in the central Mediterranean. Malta was at that time contracting private vessels to return migrants to Libya, much as the Asso 29 had done with Even and his companions.

In July 2020, Even boarded a wooden boat with 65 passengers, including three who had been on the Asso 29 with him two years earlier. Yonas, one of Even’s friends from Zintan who had failed to get passage on the boat, texted me a series of alarming messages: the boat was in distress near Malta. A reconnaissance plane flown by the German NGO Sea-Watch tweeted a picture of the small blue boat, still afloat despite its faulty engine. Sea-Watch also recorded its phone call with the Maltese rescue co-ordination centre, which refused to tell them when help might arrive. The Maltese navy had tried to avoid picking up the migrants, proposing instead to give them fuel and guide them to Italy. On his smartphone in Libya, Yonas, checking the news, eventually recognised Even, his back to the camera, along with other rescued migrants on the bridge of a Maltese ship, in a photograph published in the Times of Malta. A few days after that, Even sent me a staccato burst of messages from a holding centre for minors: ‘Am very tired of/detention/As you know we expected more freedom in Europe/not to go again in closed camp/Sometimes/am thinking am not in Europe/But thanks to God I crossed the sea/And am out of Libya.’ In 2021, Even remained in Malta. In 2022, he finally succeeded in reaching the European mainland and lodged an asylum claim in Belgium. It was upheld.

We took up our conversation again in Liège in 2023, and the following year in Namur. Even was keeping track of his companions from Zintan and from the Asso 29. Most of them had eventually reached Europe, but very few by safe and legal means. Whether they had crossed the sea or remained in Libya, many of them had been registered by UNHCR as asylum seekers and refugees, which made them eligible for the UN’s extremely modest resettlement programme. By May this year, more than ninety thousand people in Libya had been registered by the UNHCR, but only twelve thousand have been resettled in safe countries in the last eight years. Even believes that just the small number of women and four of the men from the Asso 29 have been resettled (his friend Saeed is one of them). ‘Most of us were forced to go, again, to the sea,’ Even concluded.

Last July, I returned to Tripoli. Even put me in touch with Asso 29 survivors who were still in the country. Aceto – ‘vinegar’, so nicknamed for his sharp conversation – was largely silent. He had deserted from the Eritrean army ten years earlier and was one of the detainees who had caught a stray bullet in Tareq al-Matar in 2018. He was also one of the few who was not re-arrested after the detainees took to the streets. But three years later, in 2021, he had been caught during a round-up of more than five thousand migrants in Tripoli. The militias tore up his UNHCR certificate. It was useless anyway, he said. It hadn’t protected him from arrest or freed him from detention. He suspected his file was ‘buried’ under an avalanche of casework. Another Eritrean, Filemon, had also lost faith in the resettlement process. He had seen friends killed in the Libyan desert during a fight between traffickers, before he was sold to Knife in Bani Walid and ended up in Zintan; he managed to escape from the centre by scaling a wall. Since then he had made more than one unsuccessful attempt to reach Europe. After our meeting he took a taxi to the coast, where he had been promised a place on a boat for $600. A month later, in a sudden change in his fortunes after eight years in Libya, he had succeeded in crossing two seas. He reached the UK just as the anti-migrant riots began in Southport.

Even put me in touch with Italian activists, among them Sarita Fratini, who had initially been investigating another Augusta Offshore tugboat: the Asso 28. It had returned 101 migrants to Tripoli on 30 July 2018, a month after the Asso 29 affair. The case went to court, and three years later the ship’s captain was given a suspended sentence of a year. The court in Naples found that ‘Libya could not and cannot, then as now, be considered a safe port.’ An Augusta Offshore manager I spoke to at the time felt that this precedent would encourage private shipping to turn a blind eye to boats in distress in the Mediterranean. Between 2012 and 2017, Augusta Offshore’s fleet had intervened in more than two hundred such cases with co-ordination from the Italian authorities, rescuing more than twenty thousand migrants and disembarking them in Europe. But Fratini argues that the court cases have not been counterproductive: her research in 2019 suggested that Augusta Offshore was still ferrying survivors to safe ports.

In May 2019, around the time I began visiting Zintan, Fratini and others founded a small activist research network, the Josi and Loni Project. It was named for Josi, who died of TB in Zintan, and Loni, the son of Helen, an Eritrean woman who was eight months pregnant when she was returned to Libya on the Asso 29. Helen gave birth to Loni in Tareq al-Sikka detention centre. Fratini was able to exchange text messages with Zintan detainees who had managed to keep their phones. They told her what had happened on the Asso 29. Fratini was sceptical and so was I: we both assumed that the detainees had misremembered the number of the ship, confusing it with the Asso 28. But their story was confirmed by victims in Libya and later by those who were lucky enough to reach Europe. Eventually Fratini and her colleagues obtained the logbook of the Asso 29 from Augusta Offshore, which was keen to show that it was following orders from the Italian government. It transpired from the logbook that the Italian navy destroyer Duilio was aware of Even’s struggling migrant boat before the Libyan coastguard or the Asso 29 identified it. The helicopter that hovered over their dinghy had taken off from the deck of the Duilio. Even had spotted the lights of another ship alongside the Asso 29. From the Duilio, the Italian authorities had given the Zuwarah and the Asso 29 orders and co-ordinated the return to Libya.

The Josi and Loni Project helped Helen and her son, Loni, both by then in the UK, as well as three other survivors who had also reached Europe, to go to court. There was a strong case to be made that the actions of the Italian authorities had exposed them to unlawful detention and related abuses. In June 2024, a judge determined that the Italian authorities, Augusta Offshore and the ship’s captain, Corrado Pagani, should pay compensation of €75,000 – €15,000 for each plaintiff. In August, the Italian courts upheld an appeal, lodged in June 2023, on behalf of another survivor of the Asso 29 affair, asking for safe passage from Libya to Italy. The Foreign Ministry in Rome complied, and on Christmas Day the man was flown to Italy on a humanitarian visa. ‘I can breathe, I can sleep freely,’ Even told me when we spoke in Belgium. ‘But my friends in Libya don’t. And it’s getting worse.’ New round-ups started in April and migrants are too scared to go out on the streets. Eight of the Asso 29 passengers remain in Libya.