During a visit to the Misurata detention centre, Mark Micallef found migrants desperate to make a phone call to assure their families they were still alive.

Life inside Libya’s detention centres is notoriously dire, even at the best of times. But often it is the basic things that make the experience so exasperating for migrants, like not knowing how long they will be in custody, or not being able to let their loved ones know that they are there... still alive, even.

From outside the Misurata centre, there is little to suggest human beings are being detained there. It served as a school before the 2011 revolution which ousted Muammar Gaddafi.

There is no barbed wire, no security fencing. It is a rather non-descript compound with a big building in the middle, about twice the size of the typical Libyan villa found in this part of town.

When we visited during a week-long trip to the Western part of the country, it was housing about 100 men, 10 women and two girls, all of them sub-Saharan Africans.

The first ‘guest’ to greet us was a girl aged about seven from Eritrea. A bit suspicious at first, the girl eventually let go and smiled whenever she saw the camera pointed at her.

Barefoot, her hair thick with dust, her clothes grimy, and playing in the dust, she was trying to force feed a cat. But she seemed free to roam the grounds. At 5pm, there was nobody else outside the dormitories.

The guards were friendly but hesitated to let us in. In the end, they agreed to let us speak to some migrants but not go in the dormitories.

We were taken to a converted container that could easily have been taken from the Safi detention centre, and asked us to wait.

Three men were brought forward, Frank, 34, and David, 22, both Nigerians, and Mamdou, a shy 20-year-old Malian.

“I wanna thank you people for being here,” Frank said, taking the lead.

“By seeing you here we have more hope. At least even for me to see outside.”

Depending on the policeman on duty, you go inside by cane

He claimed the only time they are let outdoors is when a head count needs to be taken. Even these moments are brief.

“It’s always with hurryness (sic) quickly, quickly, they don’t want you to look like this, left and right, just face where you are going to. After that sometimes, depending on the policeman on duty, you go inside by cane, by flogging by beating so I’m so happy to see sun today, to see outside today, I’m so, so happy.”

He explains that some of the guards use a plastic pipe to rein in the detainees, sometimes for no reason.

The picture he describes is not unique. In April, the UN Refugee Agency, one of the very few agencies that still has staff permanently working on the ground, released a critical report pointing out the Libyan coastguard was stepping up arrests and putting more migrants in centres that are simply not equipped to deal with them.

Frank was a number among the coastguard’s improved statistics. The dinghy he was on along with 70 others was intercepted by the Misuratan coastguard late in April.

“I saw a boat, not knowing it’s the Libyan people. So happy that the Lord have answered my prayers. The rescue is coming,” he recalled.

“Within a short time, I saw the flag, when I saw the Libyan flag, that is when I melted, like an ice block.”

Life in Libya had become unbearable, he said, arguing that the one positive thing about his permanence in detention has been that he does not feel he needs to watch his back all the time from people wanting to rob or kidnap him.

“When I realised it was the Libyans I shed tears. I was thinking… I lost the money I raised. I looked back to my country, there’s no way to start from. I looked back to my siblings, all hope have gone… I wanted to jump into the river… Let me become a dead man. I am telling you, I would rather go back to my country than spend another night in Libya.”

The uncertainty is killing him.

All they say is ‘later, later’

“I ask them to tell me how long I will be here. Better to be told one month, three months or even a year, at least I know what I am facing. But all they say is ‘later, later’.”

The biggest problem, he said, was that they were prevented from talking to their families.

“You know they take away our phone, so my family think I’m dead… the worst part of it is that I have called them that any moment from now, I am going to travel and be in the boat. I know that is what they are thinking, because I see them in my dreams.”

He was not the only one desperate to get information over to his relatives, so when I suggested I could take their numbers and let them know they were fine, their faces lit up.

Looking out of the window we saw that the guards were not paying attention and handed over the phone to the migrants to call their family.

David was the first to go. He called his sister. “I have a big problem, yes, I’m in prison, but I’m, I’m alive…”

“Stop shaking”, he kept telling her, “it’s OK, I’m alive.” It was a brief conversation and not much was exchanged. Both David and Mamadou kept insisting they were OK.

Frank had to go back to the dormitories to get the number for his sister because he hadn’t memorised it. Upon returning there was no answer for a few painful minutes, but eventually he got through.

“Jennifer? Yeah, it’s me Jennifer, how are you? I’m in prison… but it’s OK,” he said to a high-pitched response from the other side.

His call had to be cut short, abruptly, because one of the guards walked in.

Frank dropped the phone and we all stood up as if the interview had just finished.

Before we left, David turned to me again, asking me to reassure his sister he was OK.

I called their relatives more than once after we left Misurata. Frank’s sister Jennifer calls now and again, asking for news about her brother.

There is little any journalist can do. I was told by the guards they would be deported, but when I call Misurata for updates on their status the reply is simply that the men are still there.

Will they be deported?

“Inshalla” (God willing), is the template reply.

In the meantime their families keep praying that their loved ones will make it out of this alive.