Libyan Woman Claiming She Was Raped By Gaddafi's Soldiers Is Dragged Away (Video)

Libyan Woman Who Claimed Rape is Being Held by Government Forces

March 29, 2011

AP - On Saturday, a woman named Iman al-Obeidi burst into a Tripoli hotel full of foreign journalists and told them that she'd been taken prisoner and gang-raped by a group of pro-Qaddafi militiamen. She was wrestled away by security forces and taken to another location.

She still hasn't turned up. Her mother, Aisha Ahmad, says that Iman is being held by government forces. Ahmad claims that she's been contacted by state authorities who want her to put pressure on Iman to change her story.

"Last night at 3, they called from Gaddafi's compound and asked me to convince my daughter Iman to change what she said, and we will set her free immediately and you can take anything you and your children would ask for," Ahmad said in an interview with Britain's Sky News.

"Money, new home, just ask your daughter to change what she has said. I told my daughter, keep silent."

Al-Obeidi may soon face criminal charges herself. She named four of the men who she says raped her and held her prisoner for two days. According to Moussa Ibrahim, a spokesman for the Libyan government, this could be enough to land her in legal trouble.

"The four guys are having a case filed against her because instead of going to a police station and filing a case against them she went to the media and exposed their names," Ibrahim said this week.

"Now their honour is tainted, their families black-named and this in the Islamic law is a very grave offense."

Al-Obeidi's account has not been independently verified, but journalists who were there when she burst into the hotel say she gave the impression of one who was telling the truth. CNN noted that her injuries--including bruises, scars, and rope burns--"appeared consistent" with her story.

Charles Clover, a Financial Times reporter who was at the hotel when al-Obeidi showed up, writes that,

She "behaved very much like someone who had been through the events she was describing and did not contradict herself."

The story of Iman al-Obeidi has spread across Libya and the international media. Clover writes that by trying to impose a veil of silence, Qaddafi's government handled the incident in the worst possible way.

"Had the press minders simply given us a conference room to hear Ms Obeidi out, it would have been a minor story in a day full of Syrian riots, Japanese nuclear reactor leaks and Libyan rebels advancing on Ajdabiya," writes Clover. "Instead, the full-scale assault on Ms Obeidi by a gang of regime thugs was splashed across front pages the world over ... All the careful efforts of the Libyan government to nurture their parallel reality were demolished that day."

Libyan Woman Claiming She Was Raped By Gaddafi's Soldiers Is Dragged Away from Press by Gaddafi Forces (Video)

March 26, 2011

Telegraph - A brawl is sparked as a Libyan woman makes a plea for help at a Tripoli hotel full of foreign journalists before being bundled away by government minders.

A distressed Libyan woman made a desperate plea for help on Saturday, slipping into a Tripoli hotel full of foreign journalists to show bruises and scars she said had been inflicted on her by Muammar Gaddafi's militiamen.

The woman, Iman al-Obeidi, said forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi detained her at a checkpoint in the Libyan capital and raped her.

As reporters gathered to hear her story, security guards grabbed the woman and attempted to hood her before bundling her into a car and driving her away.

The plain-clothed government minders then shoved back and fought with reporters who tried to intervene and film the incident.

Also click here for video.

Libyan Woman Tells Reporters Gadhafi Troops Raped Her

"When people find themselves in groups of like-minded types, they are especially likely to move to extremes. And when such groups include authorities who tell group members what to do, or who put them into certain social roles, very bad things can happen. This is a general fact of social life: Much of the time, groups of people end up thinking and doing things that group members would never think or do on their own. When people talk together, what happens? Do group members compromise? Do they move toward the middle of the tendencies of their individual members? The answer is now clear, and it is not what intuition would suggest: Groups go to extremes. More precisely, members of a deliberating group usually end up at a more extreme position in the same general direction as their inclinations before deliberation began. This is the phenomenon known as group polarization." - Cass Sunstein, 'Going to Extremes: How Like Minds Unite and Divide', copyright 2009.

March 26, 2011

AP - A distraught Libyan woman stormed into a Tripoli hotel Saturday to tell foreign reporters that government troops raped her, setting off a brawl when hotel staff and government minders tried to detained her.

Iman al-Obeidi was tackled by waitresses and government minders as she sat telling her story to journalists after she rushed into the restaurant at the Rixos hotel where a number of foreign journalists were eating breakfast.

A Ministry of Information official, left, yells at the press to stop filming as he grabs Iman Al-Obeidi, who said she spent two days in detention after being arrested at a checkpoint in Tripoli, Libya, and was sexually assaulted by up to 15 men while in custody, in Tripoli Saturday March 26, 2011, after storming into the hotel's breakfast room to show her wounds to foreign media.

She claimed loudly that troops had detained her a checkpoint, tied her up, abused her, then led her away to be gang raped.

Her story could not be independently verified, but the dramatic scene provided a rare firsthand glimpse of the brutal crackdown on public dissent by Moammar Gadhafi's regime as the Libyan leader fights a rebellion against his rule that began last month.

The regime has been keeping up a drumbeat of propaganda in the Tripoli-centered west of the country under its control even as it faces a weeklong international air campaign against the Libyan military.

At a hastily arranged press conference after the incident, government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said investigators had told him the woman was drunk and possibly mentally challenged.

Before she was dragged out of the hotel, al-Obeidi managed to tell journalists that she was detained by a number of troops at a Tripoli checkpoint on Wednesday. She said they were drinking whiskey and handcuffed her. She said 15 men later raped her.

"They tied me up ... they even defecated and urinated on me," she said, her face streaming with tears. "The Gadhafi militiamen violated my honor."

The woman, who appeared in her 30's, wore a black robe and a floral scarf around her neck and identified herself. She had scratches on her face and she pulled up her black robe to reveal a bloodied thigh. She said neighbors in the area where she was detained helped her escape.

The Associated Press only identifies rape victims who volunteer their names.

As al-Obeidi spoke, a hotel waitress brandished a butter knife, a government minder reached for his handgun and another waitress pulled a jacket tightly over her head.

Al-Obeidi said she was targeted by the troops because she's from the eastern city of Benghazi, a rebel stronghold.

The waiters called her a traitor and told her to shut up. She retorted: "Easterners — we're all Libyan brothers, we are supposed to be treated the same, but this is what the Gadhafi militiamen did to me, they violated my honor."

It soon turned into a scene of chaos with journalists attempting to protect the woman from government minders who physically attacked and intimidated her.

Journalists who tried to intervene were pushed out of the way by the minders. A British television reporter was punched, and CNN's camera was smashed on the ground and ripped to pieces by the government minders.

Eventually the minders overpowered the woman and led her outside, shoving her into a car that sped away. Al-Obeidi kept crying that she was certain she would be thrown in jail. She begged photographers to take her picture, raising her robe to show them her bruised body. A minder tried to cover her mouth with his hand to keep her from talking.

"Look at what happens — Gadhafi's militiamen kidnap women at gunpoint, and rape them ... they rape them," al-Obeidi screamed.

She said she wanted to be taken to see the leader himself.

"I want to see Moammar Gadhafi. Didn't he say that every victim will have justice? I want my rights," she said.

The government spokesman said the woman was under investigation.

"The investigators did phone me and told me the lady is drunk and that she seems to be suffering mentally," Ibrahim said. "They are checking on her health condition, her mental condition, whether she was really abused or if these were fantasies."

Gadhafi's crackdown has been the region's most violent against the wave of anti-government protests sweeping the Middle East. Tensions have been rising between foreign reporters in the Libyan capital and the government minders who have sought to tightly control what they see and whom they talk to. Most of the international press corps is being housed at the Rixos hotel.