Mamadou Saidou Jaliow, a 25-year-old Gambian, explains to Al Jazeera's Evan Hill how he and at least 19 other sub-Saharan migrants came to be imprisoned in the the Ain Zara police station in Tropoli.

Jaliow says he intended to pay a smuggler $700 to transport him illegally to the Italian island of Lampedusa so that he could enter Europe but was robbed of all his money along the way.