Libyan woman accusing Gaddafi forces of rape is freed
The Libyan woman taken into custody after she told foreign journalists that Gaddafi’s militia had raped her has been freed but has reportedly been banned from leaving Tripoli, writes Jonathan Rugman.
“I am a prisoner in Tripoli,” said Eman al-Obeidi, speaking to a dissident Libyan TV channel by telephone. She claimed she had been beaten up and frequently harassed by plainclothes police after telling the world’s media that she had been stopped at a Tripoli checkpoint and then repeatedly raped.
“She was released several days ago and is at home,” said Libya’s Government spokesman, Mousa Ibrahim.
Ms Obeidi said that Libyan authorities had set her free but that she was then again detained by men with machine guns at the weekend.
“They took me around the city for hours before they left me at the Criminal Investigation Department, who released me later,” she said.
“Had the media not taken interest in my case, I would have never seen daylight again.”
Ms Obeidi has told the American network CNN that she is in a house in Tripoli, but has been banned from leaving her neighbourhood. She has also claimed that despite promises that the rape allegations would be taken seriously, nothing has been done to bring the perpetrators to justice.
“I am insisting on my rights and I stand by everything I said. I will go back to the journalists if I need to do so. They are not going to frighten or intimidate me. My life is in danger.”
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Ms Obeidi claimed she had been denied the right to join her family in Tobruk in rebel-held eastern Libya and that she was not allowed to cross the Tunisian or Egyptian borders either.
“During my entire arrest period, I was asked one thing: To come out on state television and say that those who kidnapped me were not from Gaddafi’s security forces, but from the revolutionaries and armed gangs,” she said. “That was their only request and I kept refusing.”
On 26 March, Ms Obeidi, a lawyer herself, was forcibly removed from a hotel full of foreign journalists after telling them she had been raped by Gaddafi’s forces. Her arms and legs were covered in scratches and she was filmed visibly in distress.
Scuffle
A scuffle between journalists and Libyan Government minders followed Ms Obeidi’s appearance. Journalists were punched and kicked as they attempted to film the woman and interview her. One government minder pulled a gun while a hotel waitress brandished a table knife. The incident shed rare and very public light on how the Gaddafi regime will go to extreme lengths to clamp down on internal critics.
At first, the Government spokesman said Ms Obeidi may have been drunk and potentially delusional. Then he called her a prostitute and a thief, claiming that the men she accused of rape had brought charges against her for slandering their reputations.
“She is not just the accuser, now she is the accused,” Mr Ibrahim told Channel 4 News last Tuesday, adding that her own allegation of rape had been dismissed because she refused a medical examination.
Ms Obeidi dismissed any suggestion that she was drunk or deranged.
“When people go out to demonstrate, they say they are taking hallucinogenic pills,” she said. “When people go out asking for freedom and dignity, they say they are drunk. And when I came out to ask for my rights, they said I was mentally retarded. I do not know how to respond to this regime.”
She also claimed that she did agree to a medical examination which she says proved she was raped, but that though the Attorney General’s office had promised to arrest those held responsible “they have not done anything so far.”
Ms Obeidi’s mother, Aisha Ahmad, told Al Jazeera television that the family had been offered bribes if her daughter would change her story.
“They called from Gaddafi’s compound and asked me to convince my daughter to change what she said, and we will set her free immediately and you can take anything you and your children would ask for,” she said last week. “I told my daughter, keep silent.”