Libyan Woman Eman al-Obeidy Says She Was Raped By Qaddafi Forces

by MROliver | March 26, 2011 at 01:23 pm

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A Libyan Woman, Who Said Her Name Was Eman al-Obeidy, Said She Was Raped By Members of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi's Militia.

However, the woman tried to tell her story to members of the foreign press in Tripoli, but she was dragged away from the hotel screaming, and now no one knows what happened to her.

The woman said she was raped and beaten and she showed marks on her body, such as a bruise on her face, a large scar on her upper thigh, and marks that seemed to have been made by bindings on her hands and feet according to the NYTimes.

“They say that we are all Libyans and we are one people,” said the woman, who gave her name as Eman al-Obeidy, barging in during breakfast at the hotel dining room. “But look at what the Qaddafi men did to me.”

She said she had been raped by 15 men. “I was tied up, and they defecated and urinated on me,” she said. “They violated my honor.”

She said her friends are still in custody and that she would be taken to jail when she left the hotel.

The members of the foreign are largely confined to the Rixos Hotel, and even staff at the hotel were holding back the woman and members of the press so that they could not interview her for her story. She did reveal that she had been a member of the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, and had been held for about two days before managing to escape.

“They swore at me and they filmed me. I was alone. There was whiskey. I was tied up,” she told Michael Georgy of Reuters, one of the journalists able to speak with her briefly. “I am not scared of anything. I will be locked up immediately after this.” She added: “Look at my face. Look at my back.” Her other comments were captured by television cameras.

According to the Times, several journalists were struck as they tried to interview Ms. Obeidy, and security officials destroyed a CNN video video camera and seized a device that a Financial Times reporter had used to record her story.

Two members of the hotel staff grabbed table knives to threaten both Ms. Obeidy and the journalists.

“Turn them around, turn them around,” a waiter shouted, trying to block the foreign news media from having access to Ms. Obeidy. A woman who worked at the hotel coffee bar shouted: “Why are you doing this? You are a traitor!” Then she briefly forced a dark coat over Ms. Obeidy’s head.

The woman was eventually taken away in a white car, and she yelled out that they were taking her to jail.

Questioned about her treatment, Khalid Kaim, the deputy foreign minister, promised that she would be treated in accordance with the law. Musa Ibrahim, a government spokesman, said she appeared to be drunk and mentally ill. “Her safety of course is guaranteed,” he said, adding that the authorities were investigating the case, including the possibility that her reports of abuse were “fantasies.”

In a news conference on Saturday night, he said that she was in custody of Libyan police detectives, and said it is a criminal case and not a political case. He also said that she would have the chance to meet with journalists again.