In other words, one in every six inhabitants of the Libyan capital was kidnapped and made to disappear. The damage was more lasting because the Italian authorities selected the most noted and distinguished men: scholars, jurists, wealthy traders, and bureaucrats. The conditions aboard ship were so bad that during the journey, which couldn’t have taken much more than a couple of days, hundreds of prisoners died. Some historians claim that one-quarter of the 5,000 men lost their lives during the passage. The majority of those who reached the island prisons perished in captivity. There appears to
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