Inside Abu Salim

Inside a prison cellblock at Abu Salim prison. Over two days in 1996, 1,270 inmates were massacred at the prison.
Photograph: Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos

­Hussein al-Shafi’a was an inmate at the time of the massacre. He recalls watching from the kitchen as soldiers loaded ­bodies into wheelbarrows. He had been told to wash the blood off the wristwatches that the guards had been ordered to recover from the corpses. Photograph: Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos

Burnt ­prisoner records – ­fleeing officials torched most documents. Photograph: Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos

Asma Benemail, the wife of massacre victim ­Sulaiman Elmessmary, received a death certificate only in July 2009. It listed no cause of death and recorded the date of death as 21 June 1996 - a week before the ­massacre. Photograph: Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos

An entrance door to the prison. Photograph: Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos

Fathi Terbil, a lawyer who agreed to represent the families of those killed – his ­arrest was the flash­point that led to the attack on Gaddafi’s regime. Photograph: Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos

Aliya al-Sherif’s father Mustafa was killed at the prison. He had been imprisoned without trial in 1995. The family never knew why. “I remember the day they took my father. I was four years old. I was crying.” That was the last time she saw him. Photograph: Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos

One of the courtyards where the massacre occurred. At the time, there was no mesh on the roof, there was a dirt floor and no plants Photograph: Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos

Heba (left) and Maysoon, the daughters of victim Sulaiman Elmessmary. Photograph: Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos

A hole for communication in the prison wall. Photograph: Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos

Former inmate Ahmed al-Senussi, who has been dubbed the ‘Nelson Mandela of Libya’ after being ­interned for 31 years. He has taken up a position in the new government. Photograph: Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos

The site of the mass grave – in the coming days and weeks, forensic investigators will begin the exhumation. Photograph: Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos