We investigated the anonymous, unpunished death of a young African migrant in one of Libya’s most notorious jails for those captured trying to make their way to Europe. Through that death — Aliou Candé was a 28-year-old father of three from Guinea-Bissau — we laid bare how the European Union supports, financially and politically, a brutal, outsourced policy of immigration enforcement. Libya has been hired by Europe to do the dirty work of keeping people in Africa. The human costs have been extraordinary, and the United Nations in October put it most plainly, calling the work of Libya’s Coast Guard and its detention of migrants “crimes against humanity.” And the U.N. made clear Europe was a party to the atrocities.
