A recent CNN video showing a slave auction—migrant men being sold one after another near the Libyan capital—shocked viewers around the world. It prompted calls for dramatic action by some European leaders, most notably French President Emmanuel Macron. But as The Daily Beast’s correspondent Philip Obaji Jr. has discovered in a year-long investigation, the reality is far worse than the CNN video suggests.

Several of the migrants he talked to already had been enslaved once at the hands of Boko Haram, a faction of which has pledged allegiance to the so-called Islamic State. Having escaped, they fled to the streets of Nigerian cities or to displaced persons camps, and then raised money to pay smugglers to take them to Libya. Once there, they hoped they’d be able to make it across the Mediterranean to Italy.