The last time Arwa el-Shershary saw her three children — Dahab, Abd and Mohammad — was on Sept. 2, 2015. They were on their way to school when armed men stopped their vehicle in Surman, a city in Libya’s northwest. After shooting the driver five times in the leg, the men abducted her daughter and two sons from the backseat of the car. Dahab was 11 years old, Abd was 8 and Mohammad was 6.
Two days later, a man called the Shershary family to demand a ransom of 20 million Libyan dinars — more than $2 million in the current black market — but they couldn’t afford to pay.