A journalist's near-death experience in Libya: the Outlaw Ocean Project

The Big Story

Tens of thousands of migrants choose between life or death in a quest to leave home in hopes of a better life, even if it means spending months working for cash just to pay a smuggler who will hopefully get a small boat filled past the brim to the other side of the journey.

Aliou Candé made that very decision in 2019 - in hopes of a better future for his parents, two children and pregnant wife.

A bullet to the neck at a secret, Libyan prison in 2021 killed that dream. He never saw the better life.

Host Maria Kestane speaks to Ian Urbina, Director of the Outlaw Ocean Project and host of the Outlaw Ocean Podcast about season two of the anthology where he details the story of Aliou Candé, and how his reporting of those secretive, migrant prisons almost cost him his life at the hands of Libyan militias.

You can find more on the CBC series below:

The Outlaw Ocean is an anthology podcast that plunges you into the vast and often lawless world of the open seas.

In season two, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Ian Urbina sheds light on the secretive Libyan prisons swallowing up sea-faring migrants; flagrant human rights abuses in China’s massive off-shore fleet; the horrors of a shrimp processing plant in India; and the wild story of a modern-day James Bond — if he were a repo man.

Urbina and his team repeatedly risk their safety to tell stories powerful people don’t want you to know. As podcast reviewer Lauren Passell notes, “Ian’s not relying on research, he was there [...] Outlaw Ocean makes you feel like you’re there, too.”

This immersive audio documentary series brings together more than eight years of reporting at sea on all seven oceans and more than three dozen countries.

You can find The Outlaw Ocean wherever you get your podcasts, and here: https://link.mgln.ai/Ci678x

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