Imagine this. You are being held in a holding pen in the middle of the Libyan Desert. You are watching as the men who are holding you there – by force – threaten to rape a young boy who is traveling alone. They are shooting a video of these threats which they will send to his family as a means to extort them for money. You are there but there is nothing you can do. If you do anything, if you show any emotion they will turn on you too. And life is cheap here. And you know what these men are capable of. So you keep still.  

“Max” is from Aleppo, Syria. He fled because of the war, and flew first to Sudan before starting on the trek north through the desert. Avoiding criminal gangs in Libya was impossible. From the moment he crossed the border he was quite literally at their mercy. He was dropped in the desert by smugglers and criminal gangs picked him up. If he didn’t go with them he would die. If he did go with them he was theirs to torture and extort for money. 

 “Libya,” Max says, “is a prison.”  

His captors were adept at both psychological and physical torture.  

“There used to be people using electric sticks. They burned people with plastic.”  

And frequently on camera. They would ask you to pay them and if you didn’t have the money, they would tell you to call your family and ask “to pay enough to keep you alive.”  

..... I know the world is heavy right now. So much to pay attention to and so much to fight for. This is the last of the stories in the piece linked to in my bio. Max didn’t want to be photographed, didn’t want his real name to be used but he wanted us all to know what happened to him in #Libya. 

April 2018