When uniformed men boarded the overloaded rubber dingy carrying Christelle Timdi and her boyfriend to a new life in Europe she thought the Italian coast guard had come to rescue them.
But the men took out guns and began to shoot. "Many people fell in the sea," the 32-year-old Cameroonian said as she described seeing her boyfriend, Douglas, falling in the water and disappearing into the darkness.
The gunmen took Timdi and her fellow passengers back to Libya, where they were locked up, raped, beaten and forced to make calls to their families back home for ransom payments to secure their freedom.