Manu Brabo

Manuel Varela de Seijas Bravo was born in Zaragoza, Spain around 1981 and lived in Gijón, Spain. He studied photography at the School of Arts and Crafts in Oviedo and journalism at Charles III University in Madrid.^[1][2][3]

After completing his education, Brabo worked at some Spanish newspapers and news agencies.^[1] He covered the Libyan Civil War in 2011, the Syrian Civil War, the Russo-Ukrainian war and the war in Iraq as other conflicts. He has worked as a freelance photojournalist for the Associated Press (AP) and the European Pressphoto Agency,^[4] and his work has been published in newspapers and magazines. He is co-founder with Spanish photographers Guillem Valle, José Colón and Diego Ibarra as well as the Italian Fabio Bucciarelli, of MEMO, a cooperative of photojournalists created in 2014 in Torino, Italy.^{[citation needed]}

Benghazi

Brega

Misrata

Tripoli

Places where Brabo and the other journalists traveled to in Libya relative to the capital Tripoli.

On 5 April 2011, Brabo along with journalists James Foley, Clare Morgana Gillis and Anton Hammerl were reportedly detained by pro-Gaddafi soldiers in the Libyan Desert near Brega. As they were traveling with an unorganized militia they witnessed a military truck approaching them. It was then that one of the journalists, later identified as Hammerl, was shot from the military truck.^[5][6][7][8] Brabo was one of the 16 journalists detained in Tripoli.^[9] While being held in Tripoli, they received a visit from a Spanish diplomat who reported that Brabo along with others were being held humanely and were treated well.^[10] He and the other journalists were found guilty in a Libyan court for entering without a proper visa and their sentences suspended. Brabo and the others were released on 18 May 2011.^[11]