Ayman*, 28: "I had already made the prayer for those who are dying, then I was rescued"

“When you found us, we had already made the prayer of those who are dying”.

That is the harrowing accountg of a 28 year old father.

Ayman*, 28, is from Egypt. Following his father’s passing, he became responsible for his wife, children, mother, and siblings. He had accumulated debts and, even with his work in a medicine factory, could not make ends meet. So he decided to travel to Libya to make money to send to his family and erase his debts.

Once in Libya, the smugglers took him to a «sort of prison» and asked for far more money than initially requested, an extortion. Ayman had no way to get the money but could not go back to Egypt, so he had to call his family to send it.

«I was kept in a place with many other people – Ayman remembers – and I saw no daylight for six months. We were barely fed, and we were given salty water to drink».

The people who imprisoned him forced him to call his mother to ask for more money while their guns were pointed at him. «They know the mothers cannot leave their child being held in captivity and torture», he says. His family was forced to sell their gold and belongings to pay the people detaining him.

He was transported several times from one place to another. «We never understood if they were police or not but in any case, we realised we cannot trust any authority figure or anyone in Libya».

«One day – Ayman remembers – we were brought to the beach and arrived at a boat we thought would take us to Italy». Instead, armed people arrived and took everything they had. They were taken to an apartment, stripped to their boxers, and tortured for four days.

«They were very creative with the means of torture. One day electrocution, the other day something else. They didn’t care between men, women, elderly, everyone suffered the same way».

Ayman says that if people did not manage to get enough money by calling their family, the Libyans took their organs to sell them and left them to die.

After that, they were moved to another place. While in the truck, Ayman and five other Egyptians jumped out. «We knew we could get killed but at this point I thought nothing was worse than staying with the torturers». They heard gunshots but managed to escape, hiding in trees wearing only their boxers.

They were lucky to find an Egyptian family in the city who helped them with clothes.

At that point, Ayman could not turn back to Egypt although he wanted to. Eventually, he found another means to leave Libya.

«When we were brought to the beach – tells us Ayman – we had to swim to the boat, with water until our neck. The weather was very bad, with big waves. We were all terrified to get onto that boat. But there were armed Libyans threatening us to get onboard. I thought I would rather die at sea than under torture in the hands of the Libyans. We were cold and lost at sea. We were sure we were going to die».

So they prayed, resigned to their death. Instead they found safety on the Ocean Viking.

Photo: Ville Maali/SOS MEDITERRANEE