AP journalists Sam Magdy, Ahmed Hatem and Renato Brito documented migrant activity that peaked during the late summer months as many set off from Libya’s shores on dangerous crossings of the Mediterranean Sea.
Reporter Magdy and his Cairo colleague, video journalist Hatem, spent several weeks aboard a search-and-rescue ship that patrols the central Mediterranean. They witnessed the rescues of more than 60 migrants who were at risk of drowning; several of the migrants told harrowing stories of torture and abuse in migrant detention centers in Libya. The pair’s reporting was among the most in-depth coverage since the pandemic of the atrocities migrants face on the journey toward Europe.
Meanwhile, after months of trying, Barcelona-based Brito got a seat aboard a small aircraft that non-governmental rescue groups use to monitor the migrants at sea. Working all formats, Brito showed over the course of multiple flights how the crew searched for boats in distress and prodded ships in the area to take part in rescues.
The coverage coincided with the largest crackdown on migrants inside Libya in recent years, during which some 5,000 were detained by Libyan forces, reported by Magdy from the ship operated by Doctors Without Borders. The story’s release also came within days of a United Nations report that said there is evidence of possible crimes against humanity in Libya’s migrant interceptions and detentions.
AP’s multiformat work at sea and from the air saw widespread use in Europe, the Middle East and beyond. U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., issued a statement just days after the story was released on the need to address the abuses migrants face in Libya.
Guinean migrant Osman Touré waits his turn to receive a test for COVID-19 aboard the Geo Barents, a rescue vessel operated by the medical aid group Doctors Without Borders, before disembarking on the island of Sicily, Italy, Sept. 29, 2021. Touré is among tens of thousands of migrants who have endured abuse in Libyan detention centers as they flee poverty and wars in Africa and the Middle East.
AP Photo / Samy Magdy
German volunteers Leona Blankenstein, left, and David Lohmueller, aboard the Seabird, a humanitarian monitoring aircraft, search for migrant boats in distress as they fly over the Mediterranean Sea between Libya and the Italian island of Lampedusa, Oct. 5, 2021. The plane, owned by the German non-governmental organization Sea-Watch, documents human rights violations committed against migrants at sea and relays distress calls to nearby ships and authorities who have increasingly ignored their pleas.
AP Photo / Renata Brito
Migrants sit on the deck of the Italian supply vessel Asso Ventinove after they were rescued from an unseaworthy wooden boat drifting in the Mediterranean Sea near the Bouri oilfields north of Libya, Oct. 2, 2021.
AP Photo / Renata Brito
An African migrant barber shaves a fellow migrant’s head aboard the rescue vessel Geo Barents after they were rescued in the Mediterranean Sea off Libya, Sept. 27, 2021. Migrants rescued say that they were tortured and their families extorted for ransoms in Libya’s detention centers.
AP Photo / Ahmed Hatem
Mohamed Salah, a migrant from Ivory Coast, sits on the deck of the rescue vessel Geo Barents waiting to disembark on the island of Sicily, Italy, Sept. 27, 2021.
AP Photo / Ahmed Hatem
Migrants who crossed the Mediterranean Sea by boat line up behind a fence in Lampedusa, Italy, Oct. 1, 2021, as they wait to board a ferry to Sicily. Despite the risks, many migrants and refugees say they'd rather die trying to cross to Europe than be returned to Libya.
AP Photo / Renata Brito