Escaping Libya's Detention Industry

Since the collapse of the regime of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, Libya has been a key transit country for refugees and migrants seeking to cross the Mediterranean and reach Europe. In the political and economic vacuum which followed the uprising and the collapse of Gaddafi’s state, smuggling and trafficking expanded, upending the patchwork of agreements by which Europe sought to close its southern maritime borders.

By 2015, EU migration policy increasingly focused on ‘externalisation’ of its borders, preventing refugees and migrants from crossing the Mediterranean through deals with states including Libya. EU agencies and member states sought to support and equip Libyan actors to prevent crossings, as well as supporting state-affiliated detention centres, where refugees and migrants would be taken.

Today, countless people remain arbitrarily trapped in detention centres across Libya, where they are subjected to torture and extortion. These sites, affiliated with local non-state actors and militias, are underwritten by EU support, but near-impossible to monitor. The EU and its member states have become complicit in endemic violence against vulnerable people, and European resources have come to underwrite an economic logic of illegal detention, torture, and extortion across Libya.

Using 3D digital modelling and satellite imagery, in collaboration with Lawyers for Justice in Libya and supported by Forensic Architecture, we interviewed survivors of this brutal network of detention centres, as well as local experts. Their testimonies reveal the evolution of Libya’s ‘detention industry’.

One such survivor, Anbessa, left his native Eritrea as a child, living for many years in a refugee camp in neighbouring Ethiopia. In 2015, he paid a smuggler to take him from Ethiopia to Europe. Over the following year, he made a dangerous journey through Sudan to Libya, where he was held in a series of smuggling and trafficking hubs. In 2016, he crossed the Mediterranean with the help of a smuggler and eventually reached the United Kingdom, where he was granted asylum in 2018.

In 2019, three years after Anbessa’s journey began, Stephane and Martin left Cameroon, and were smuggled across the Sahara into Libya, aiming for Europe. But by then the journey through Libya had changed. The Libyan Coast Guard had been outfitted with new boats and technologies, financed by the EU. The Mediterranean had become a heavily surveilled environment, part of a cyclical ‘detention industry’: a network of detention centres and seaports, spanning the length and breadth of Libya, whose economic logic was underwritten by EU support.

The evolution of Libya’s detention industry can be read in the journeys of its survivors. Anbessa successfully crossed the Mediterranean on his first attempt in 2016. Over five years later, Stephane eventually made it across the Mediterranean on his fourth attempt. Martin was successful on his ninth attempt.

Local experts shared videos of former trafficking sites in Bani Walid. This site, on the outskirts of Bani Walid, is where migrants and refugees were sold and traded, before being dispersed to facilities across the town.

After the fall of the Gaddafi regime in 2011, the Libyan state collapsed into regional power bases. Amid this upheaval, local militias turned towns like Bani Walid, on the northern edge of the Libyan Desert, into hubs for smuggling and trafficking.

The first such site in Bani Walid was a disused factory, abandoned after the 2011 revolution, and repurposed in 2015 as a detention centre. Local experts reported that it would hold up to five thousand people at a time. In the years that followed, similar detention centres multiplied across the town, initially in repurposed industrial and agricultural buildings, then, as the industry boomed, in purpose-built facilities. In the years that followed, detainees like Anbessa endured horrific conditions and abuse at sites throughout Bani Walid.

Jdaid Compound, situated in an empty factory, was the first trafficking site in the heart of Bani Walid in 2015.

To understand how these sites functioned, we examined a compound built by the Diab crime family, well-known Libyan traffickers, in 2017, at the height of trafficking activities in Bani Walid. Moussa Diab, the head of the family, was reported to spend the profits of his extortion business on parties in Dubai. For a period, the compound he owned in Bani Walid, was operated by the notorious Eritrean trafficker Walid Negash, who stood trial in the Netherlands in 2024.

We modelled the Diab Compound, a key trafficking site on the outskirts of Bani Walid, with information provided by our local experts.

Today, virtually all of the former trafficking sites in Bani Walid are abandoned. In 2021, a militia known as the 444 Brigade shut down many of these operations in a bid to gain legitimacy under a new Libyan government. But while the physical sites now lie empty, the violent logic of Libya’s detention regime has not disappeared. Instead, it has shifted into state-run facilities, overseen by government departments operating with the EU’s support.

Even before the closure of Bani Walid, deals between the EU, its member states—most notably Italy—and Libya led to the expansion of border measures, including increased capacity for the Libyan Coast Guard (LCG). In 2017, Libya’s Government of National Unity (GNU) signed an EU-backed agreement with Italy which pledged financial and technical support to the LCG, including patrol boats donated by Italy, alongside additional security measures in the Mediterranean. The EU’s border agency, Frontex, began to work more closely with the Libyan Coast Guard, sharing information to help them carry out interceptions of small boats, and take the passengers back to detention centres in Libya.

With Martin, we reconstructed his experience of being intercepted by the Libyan Coast Guard as he attempted to cross the Mediterranean, before being returned to Ain Zara.

Those detention centres, operated by the Department for Combating Illegal Migration (DCIM), within Libya’s Interior Ministry, also expanded as a result of EU-Libya deals, receiving funding and support through EU-backed programmes. Since that time, many of these centres have faced widespread criticism for severe human rights abuses, including overcrowding, malnutrition, lack of basic sanitation, sexual violence, torture and extortion.

Al Mayah is one such detention centre under the DCIM, located near the city of Tripoli. The name means ‘water’; situated not far from the shore of the Mediterranean, many refugees and migrants intercepted by the Libyan Coast Guard are brought directly to this detention centre.

Many of those intercepted at sea are brought by the Libyan Coast Guard to Al Mayah Port and from here, directly to the Al Mayah detention centre.

Since 2017, the centre has been run by a local militia known as 55 Brigade, which has its headquarters next to the site. The 55 Brigade initially used the site for its illegal activities including fuel smuggling and people trafficking. Later, they started using Al Mayah for detaining migrants and refugees captured at sea, to involve themselves in migration politics and seek recognition, amidst deals between Libya and the EU. In 2021, Al Mayah was formally integrated into the DCIM.

Al Mayah Detention Centre is one of at least 29 detention centres under the Directorate of Combatting Illegal Migration (DCIM), affiliated with Libya’s Interior Ministry. Stephane was detained here twice and experienced inhumane conditions and violence.

One of our interviewees, Stephane, was detained at Al Mayah twice. During his second period of detention at Al Mayah, he saw that the site had expanded. The 55 Brigade militia funded this expansion both through support from the DCIM, and, according to our interviewees, through extorting those detainees who could afford to pay to leave.

Together with Stephane, we reconstructed the layout of the detention centre, and explored his memories of his time there. He recounted violence, deprivation, and extortion; he also described passing notes to the staff of the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR. While the UNHCR is present in some of these centres, it has evidenced little capacity or influence to prevent abuse, or improve conditions. This limited role has led to accusations that the agency’s presence only legitimises the detention network, rather than effectively monitoring or improving conditions.

Stephane re-constructs a scene in which UNHCR visited Al Mayah detention centre.

Located on the outskirts of Tripoli, Ain Zara is another official DCIM-run detention centre. Since 2017, it has been operated by the 42nd Brigade militia, whose headquarters are situated next to the compound.

Both Stephane and Martin were taken to Ain Zara following interceptions at sea. There, they endured and witnessed severe abuse, including extortion, violence, overcrowding, and poor food. Some of this occurred within the very building visited by the UN Secretary-General in 2019.

Stephane describes the hangar that he was kept within whilst detained in Ain Zara.

Martin describes being tasered by a prison guard, whilst kept in Ain Zara detention centre.

Libya has no refugee law, and no asylum system. As a result, refugees and migrants are automatically illegalised, and can be subjected to indefinite detention in centres like Al Mayah and Ain Zara.

This legal vacuum enables the widespread practice of extortion. The militias that control the detention centres collaborate routinely with traffickers, and with their intermediaries, who enter the hangars to negotiate ransoms with individual detainees. Those who can pay are released, and taken back to sea – where they will very likely be intercepted, and fed back into the detention industry. Those who cannot afford to pay have few remaining options. Some risk escape, unaware of where they are, with no clear destination.

Stephane documented his fourth and final attempt to cross the Meditareanan, when he successfully made it to Italy.