Rape Allegations Ganging Up on Gaddafi

Friday, April 29, 2011
last update Feb. 4, 2012

Note June 10: The top prosecutor for the International Court that's Criminal (ICC) has just added mass rape charges to the arrest warrants sought against Muammar Gaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam, and brother-in-law Abdullah Senoussi. Therefore, the cartoonishly thick allegations below have taken on more importance suddenly (see also, at bottom, update for June 13.

Iman, in Passing: A PR Stunt for War?

The issue of rape as weapon in the Libyan Civil War is, by design, tied in with its most vivid and personal allegation, by Iman al-Obeidi. On March 26, the soon-to-be anti-Gaddafi icon dramatically revealed a multi-day ordeal of gang rape, abuse, and himuliation by 15 of Gaddafi's troops, one of whom she was able to identify as a high-ranking officer and a relative of Col. Gaddafi's.

The effect was huge. No one could be factually sure - even if the allegation was all true - that this was a crime of the regime as opposed to some drunk soldiers behaving very badly. But of course it was generally taken as the first. The appearance of cover-up hasn't helped, from her famously being dragged away to the government smears and insults, and the fear of being silenced she's expressed to the several western journalists who've been able to speak with her just fine. But her story, which I'll cover separately in more detail, is far from established truth.
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Update June 10: In fact, her later exploits raise further doubts - she later escaped to Qatar, only to be shipped back to Benghazi battered and bruised anew, this time she said by the Qatari government.
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An article of April 28 in the Nation of Islam-linked journal The Final Call gave the al-Obeidi story as reason 10 of "Ten reasons why the US War in Libya is a CIA Operation."

Rape is charged. A distraught, English-speaking, Arab woman fortuitously finds her way from days of gang rape by Gadhafi's soldiers into the only hotel in Tripoli where foreign journalists are encamped (apparently dropped off by her tormentors) where she reports of her ordeal to the gathered media who immediately, unquestioningly, broadcast the brutal crime to the world as proven fact. She claimed that she was detained at a checkpoint, tied up, abused, then led away to be gang raped—all whilst her assailants were defending Tripoli against a Western bombing campaign. “They defecated and urinated on me and tied me up,” she said, her face streaming with tears. “They violated my honor, look at what the Gadhafi militiamen did to me.”

Everybody who heard this woman's claims—except 100 percent of the Western media—immediately remembered October 1990, when a sobbing 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl gave unsworn testimony in a Congressional hearing chaired by Zionist congressman Thomas Lantos in which she described what she saw in a Kuwaiti hospital with her own eyes: “While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where … babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die.”

The girl was actually the daughter of a Kuwaiti ambassador, and had been coached by the public relations firm Hill and Knowlton to give false testimony. Three months passed between the hearing and the start of the first Gulf War during which the fabricated incubator story was repeated over and over again by seven U.S. senators and ten times by President G.H.W. Bush himself. It was recited as fact in congressional testimony, on TV and radio talk shows like Nightline, and at the UN Security Council. It is cited as the single most persuasive reason that the American public backed the first Iraq War. None of those involved with the hoax have ever faced legal reprisals. CIA √

Actually, that highly relevant stunt has a better parallel, subject-wise, in the fakery-supported claim of Gaddafi's snipers picking off young children. But this additional charge has been more effective and convincing than that cartoonish claim. As Wikipedia explains it "[al-Obeidi's] insistence on telling her story in public had the effect of challenging both the Gadaffi regime and the taboo that surrounds discussion of sex crimes in that country." In a time of no shortage of challenges to Gaddafi, this one was always sure to "win the women's vote" for regime change, as it were.

And the impression given by the "taboo" part, is that this social pioneer is our first glimpse into a dark pit of systematic sexual violence. Prurient puritanical imaginations tend to run wild with things like this, and it's been widely presumed Iman represents but a screaming tip of a silent iceberg.

Africans Here to Rape our Women!
Indeed, it's much larger, say the balanced experts in rebel territory. The fear of rape by big, black, African mercenaries is a common theme of the alarmism of the early days. First, there are valid questions over how many foreign merceenaries there ever were in this war. Many or all of those captured as such, who have been double-checked, are either Libyan fighters from the south, or foreign workers (see below).

Yet these peoples' pigmentation had allowed a near-hysterical conflation of these into a mostly phantom enemy - the foreign, black African fighter. They were largely killed, forced into hiding, or chased away. They were captured in the hundreds by armed rebels, bludgeoned to death by gangs and de-pantsed in public, shot execution style in the dozens, hacked down, hanged in the squares, burned to a crisp, and in once case, awkwardly decapitated at the center of a night-time celebration in Benghazi's main square. (see: Rebel Atrocity Videos)

A few hundred other black African workers die each time one of the vessels carrying them capsizes in the Mediterranean, trying to flee this madness to Italy. Gaddafi is blamed, and it's called an attack on Europe.

With their skill identifying the nationalities or combatant status of their victims, one wonders if any of the rebel claims of the mercenary rape spree were reliable either. This from the Monthly Review, April 20

The Independent's Michael Mumisa observed that "foreign media outlets have had to rely mostly on unverified reports posted on social network websites and on phone calls from Libyans terrified of Gaddafi's 'savage African mercenaries who are going door-to-door raping our women and attacking our children'," and he speaks of "a Twitter user based in Saudi Arabia," who "wrote how Gaddafi is 'ordering african mercenaries to break into homes in Benghazi to RAPE Libyan women in order to detract men protesters!'"

Some of the particular Twitter tweets of rumors that managed to get in and out of Libya, despite the internet shut-down, and might have wound up stoking that ethnic cleansing:

LibyanThinker URGENT!!! From contact in the Army: So far, 1300African Mercenaries have arrived in #Libya to date. Cant' the World hear our cries??? Sat Feb 19 2011 23:21:00 (Eastern Standard Time) via TweetDeck Retweeted by you and 84 others
[...]
Tripolitanian I URGE THE LIBYAN ARMY TO SIDE WITH THE LIBYAN PEOPLE - don't let these African mercs kill your family! #Libya #Feb17 Sat Feb 19 2011 20:23:04 (Eastern Standard Time) via web Retweeted by you and 54 others
[...]
LibyanThinker NEW! #Gaddafi has given the African Mercenaries full freedom in raping Libyan women. #Libya Sat Feb 19 2011 19:57:04 (Eastern Standard Time) via web Retweeted by you and 20 others

Might be A Hundred / Family Values Assaulted
On April 17, The First Post in the UK ran a more scholarly article supporting this tactic by the more regular forces, if not the mercenaries. It's entitled "Gaddafi's Men use Rape as a Weapon of War," and reads in part:

Horrifying accounts of the systematic use of gang rape as a weapon of war by fighters loyal to dictator Colonel Gaddafi have emerged from Libya. Women have been violated in front of their own children - and some have asked their relatives to kill them rather than face Gaddafi's men.

Khalifa al-Sharkassi, a German-trained doctor based in al-Baida in north-eastern Libya, told the Sunday Times he is collecting the testimony of abused women. He believes as many as 100 have been subjected to gang rape.
[...]
Sharkassi decided to speak out despite rigid taboos on discussing rape or "dishonour" as it is known in Libyan society. He told the story of one 28-year-old mother of two, identified only as Leila, who was violated with one of her young children in her arms. Leila told Sharkassi she was raped on the night of March 14 by Gaddafi's soldiers who came to her home when her husband was away fighting for the rebels. She said: "The soldiers told me they would kill my children. They sneered 'you or your children'. I held one son close but one of the men forced me down onto the bed, then it happened..."

The attack took place as her children, aged 4 and 5, watched. Such is the shame associated with rape in Libya that Leila's husband will not see her and she is contemplating suicide.
Reporter Hala Jaber says this is just one of many cases he [sic - a she] has been told about. In another, a woman was raped over several hours, losing consciousness and waking again to find a bad bite on her breast.

These stories are emotionally upsetting and such atrocities are possible enough in a war situation. But they are neither confirmed nor proven, serve a suspiciously useful role as anti-Gaddafi propaganda, and even if true do not prove - or even strongly suggest - any government sanction for mass rape as a tool in their campaign.

Only Regime Change can Save these Kids
Social taboos are cited for the lack evidence of widespread sexual violence in this war. But children can be so much more open, with the social norms of the adult world not as firmly imprinted yet. It was so that Michael Mahrt, with the organization Save The Children (and who could disagree?) oversaw hundreds of interviews with children displaced by the fighting. Reuters reported, April 23:

Save The Children said it had spoken to nearly 300 children in six temporary camps in rebel-held Benghazi and heard reports of rapes and murders committed within the last four weeks in Ras Lanuf, Ajdabiyah and Misrata.
[...]
In one case mothers who had fled the fighting told the charity that a group of four or five teenage girls in Ajdabiyah had been abducted, held hostage for four days and raped.

"The stories are similar that we get across these camps. I am completely confident that this happened," [Mahrt] told Reuters.

Please note that Mahrt "said the families and children spoke of "soldiers" committing the assaults, but the charity could not say which side they came from." This leaves it open, in some instances at least, that rebel fighters could be responsible. In fact, if all of them used the same vague term - "soldiers" - it might be a sign of coaching. It is well-established that a majority of child sexual abuse is committed by those within the home, or from near it.

The interviews were carried out in "temporary camps in rebel-held Benghazi," and detailed attacks "within the last four weeks." But these were newcomers, with tales from "Ras Lanuf, Ajdabiyah and Misrata," places where fighters of both sides have had some free reign. In civilized and loyalist-free Benghazi, rape of children has probably been eradicated, we're to believe.

Clearly, the effect of that STC report, like the others, is more demonization of the regime. Even leaving the identities of the pedophiles unclear (perhaps because 2/3 of the kids described rebel attackers?), few people out there will read this and decide we have to "save the children" from perverts among the freedom-fighter camp. That would be rather an uphill battle to start without even offering any specifics, considering this media climate and that the rebels are becoming the recognized government of Libya day by day. Now more than ever, the bad things must have been done by the bad guys. 

"Male Enhancement" from the Regime of Rape
As if it's not enough that "Gaddafi's men" are using sexual violence against women and children, the United States' top voice at the United Nations is taking a cartoonish new twist on a new offensive for international support. The US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, says Gadhafi troops have been issued Viagra to enhance their drive to war-sex-crimes! As reported by MSNBC, April 28

UNITED NATIONS — The U.S. envoy to the United Nations told the Security Council Thursday that troops loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi were increasingly engaging in sexual violence and some had been issued the impotency drug Viagra, diplomats said.

Several U.N. diplomats who attended a closed-door Security Council meeting on Libya told Reuters that U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice raised the Viagra issue in the context of increasing reports of sexual violence by Gadhafi's troops.
"Rice raised that in the meeting but no one responded," a diplomat said on condition of anonymity. The allegation was first reported by a British newspaper.
[...]
Several diplomats said Rice provided no evidence for the Viagra allegation, which they said was made in an attempt to persuade doubters the conflict in Libya was not just a standard civil war but a much nastier fight in which Gadhafi is not afraid to order his troops to commit heinous acts. "She spoke of reports of soldiers getting Viagra and raping," a diplomat said. "She spoke of Gadhafi's soldiers targeting children, and other atrocities."

Rice's statement, diplomats said, was aimed principally at countries like India, Russia and China, which have grown increasingly skeptical of the effectiveness of the NATO-led air strikes, which they fear have turned the conflict into a protracted civil war that will cause many civilian deaths. Most council members, diplomats said, had expected Gadhafi's government to collapse quickly. They said the frustration felt by India, Russia and China would likely grow if the war dragged on.

Ouch. That didn't go well. One should hope. No one else finds it reputable. MSNBC again reported on April 29

There is no evidence that Libyan military forces are being given Viagra and engaging in systematic rape against women in rebel areas, US military and intelligence officials told NBC News on Friday.
[...]
While rape has been a weapon of choice in many other African conflicts, the US officials say they've seen no such reports out of Libya.

Not only the Viagra aspect of the rape campaign, but the rape campaign itself is unsupported, say these unusually square-sounding (but unnamed) military and intelligence sources.

This claim is cited as originally coming from the British tabloid press, but it seems to have been aired earlier yet on al-Jazeera, March 28, and that came from those trustworthy rebel-affiliated doctors:

Several doctors say they have found Viagra tablets and condoms in the pockets of dead pro-Gaddafi fighters, alleging that they were using rape as a weapon of war.

They say they have been treating female rape survivors who were allied with pro-democracy forces.

The stuff allegedly found in the pockets of dead men was evidence for the allegation. The only evidence, for the highly useful allegation. The UK Daily Star was one to repeat it on April 18:

A Libyan doctor says there has been over 100 cases of rape and Gaddafi has even issued troops with Viagra to fuel their attacks.

Sounds like our good friend Dr. Khalifa al-Sharkassi, whose work I gave some credence to above. A bit less now. The Daily Fail was another, on April 18:

Details also emerged yesterday of gang rape being used by Gaddafi’s soldiers, many of them African mercenaries supplied with Viagra by the Libyan leader’s officials.

And now after Rice they're recycling it, predictably mixed-in with Save The Children's Concerns. The Mirror, April 27:

Gaddafi thugs 'rape children while pumped up on Viagra'
CHILDREN as young as eight have been raped in front of their families by Viagra-fuelled troops loyal to Colonel Gaddafi, aid workers claim.

Otherwise, it's a repeat of the previous findings, with no support for the Viagra part, from aid workers or otherwise.

Who Else in Libya can Combine Violence and Penises?
Recall the frenzied tweets about Afro-Mercs and therir door-to-door rape sprees. The new authorities caught some of these dark foreigners and managed to get them into a jail alive. The proof was shown, about 50 captured Africans, paraded before journalsists in late March. Unexpectedly, one of the trophies spoke up, and was noted by a writer for the Los Angeles Times:

“I am a worker, not a fighter. They took me from my house and [raped] my wife,” he said, gesturing with his hands. Before he could say much more, a pair of guards told him to shut up and hustled him through the steel doors of a cell block, which quickly slammed behind them.
[...]
Times reporter David Zucchino, our interpreter and I skipped the bus ride back and instead got a lift from a passing motorist. In the car, our interpreter, a Libyan national, asked Zucchino: “So what do you think? Should we just go ahead and kill them?”

Between these two exchanges, the man in question was argued down, by a gaurd producing his Gambian passport, which "proved" he was a mercenary killer, not a Gambian worker living in Libya with his wife. His name was written down, as Alfusainey Kambi, and someone should check up on him. One can only wonder, if this brave man's story is true, does it show a fluke incident, or is Mr. Kambi the vocal tip of a silent iceberg?

It's also said this video's audio track is of a woman explaining how she and at least one other young woman who supported the government were punished - with gang rape - by part of a rebel mob. I can't understand spoken Arabic, but it's said "she is calling for the Libyan army to come to save them!" As is sometimes said of the rebels making their i-phone videos, this girl might be risking her life to come forward with this charge, living as she is behind enemy lines and there's no one coming to the rescue.


I've always wondered what life is like for known Gaddafi supporters in Misrata. The rebels are in charge there but under siege from without, and maybe looking for fifth columnists within, or seeking to intimidate them into silence or death. Here is a horrifying account of systematic mass rape, murder, dismemberment, and so on that I'm inclined to doubt. I hope to God it isn't true and we have a desperate lashing back in the rape-baiting ring of this propaganda war.
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Update May 23: Rape Parties in Misrata New allegations from the BBC's Andrew Harding of mass rape come from two young black men captured in Misrata. They confess in some detail to being forced into a huge cue to rape some young rebel women. Analysis and de-bunks split off to this dedicated post.

In summary, the two boys, aged 17 and 21 and apparently from nearby Tawergha, said they were compelled (and paid a bit) to partake in the gang rape of four daughters from a certain family. There was smoking and dancing to pop music, and family members were bound, shot in the legs, and forced to watch. They said they heard broadcast on the military radio bragging about doing this to 50 families.

When they were later interviewed seperately by a professional from Amnesty International, the captives' stories changed, conflicted, fell apart. All in all, I conclude there's a damn good chance they were just coerced by the racist rebels. The myth of mass rape by black Tawerghans was seeded in the minds of Misrata's rebels and told to the world outside, to pump up the one for the coming purge of the enemy town, and to explain to the other why their final solution for their southern neighbors was justified.

Update May 30: Male rape in the Benghazi underground
Considering the social taboos against discussing rape, and additional taboos against homosexual behavior, a Youtube video conveys something I find odd. To the whole world, a young male allegedly freed from an underground dungeon at the Katiba base in Benghazi, openly speaks of his rape and that of others, by government soldiers.

He tells of the sodomizing of an old man with a stick, and their being urinated on - as well as generally tortured and humiliated, starved, and finally slated for hanging, in a busy five day ordeal. Much of this was done by African mercenaries, the rest by col. Gaddafi's own son Saadi and his trusted aide Abdullah Senoussi.

The brutal end of all this was only averted at the last minute, he says, by the fall of the Katiba. Praise God and pass the popcorn - it's like a snuff movie where reality itself is the victim.

Update June 13: The ICC's announcement of expanded charges to include mass rape led to a small controversy. A top UN investigator who'd just been to Libya finding facts dismissed the broad sweep of charges, if not each and every one, as the product of a "massive hysteria," leading to impassioned rebuttals. But he had reason to say that, citing a questionable claim of 70,000 questionnaires being mailed in the midst of the war and receiving 60,000 responses with 259 reports of rape by regime forces. His mission asked for copies, but the woman responsible was unable to produce any for them. Yet it was her claim of "proof" of mass rape that convinced the ICC to add it to the reasons to arrest the three most powerful men in Libya today.

One of them. Sennoussi, was indicted for not planning but "participating" in attacks on civilians. See the previous entry and ask yourself, were these alleged attacks Moreno-Ocampo cites below ground level? We don't know - the ICC's evidence is redacted and secret.

Updates, Feb. 4, long overdue:
Allegations and Crimes of the Takeover Period and no more Gaddafi regime to blame anymore:
UK Daily Mail, Aug 31: Father slit throats of three daughters in 'honour killing' after they were raped by Gaddafi's troops
This was in Misrata, reported by Physicians for Human Rights. As the Mail put it, among other uncovered alleged crimes, "Gaddafi's men ... used rape as a weapon of war with deadly consequences." Even if the allegation is true, we can see they had a little help with the deadly part.

Richard Sollom, who was the lead author on the report, concluded that no one had evidence that rape was widespread - but the fear of sexual assault was endemic.
'One witness reported that (Gaddafi) forces transformed an elementary school into a detention site where they reportedly raped women and girls as young as 14 years old,' the report noted.

Distress: Iman Al-Obeidi claimed she had been raped by Gaddafi's men when she rushed into the Rixos hotel in Tripoli
It added that it had found no evidence to confirm or deny reports that Gaddafi troops and loyalists were issued Viagra-type drugs to sustain their systematic rapes.
Researchers also heard reports of suspected honour killings - including the murder of the three sisters by their father.
But PHR also noted that 'some in Tomina have stood up against this practice, including a well-known sheik who has publicly advocated for raped women and girls to be seen as brave and bringing honor to their families'.

Gaddafi's Revolutionary Nuns: Raped by Gaddafi and Friends?
Routine abuse of his own female bodyguards and other female soldier types, covered in a post here.

Gaddafi's Revolutionary Nuns: Raped and Killed by Rebels?
The flip-side.Again, both sets of allegations have problems and are less than totally convincing.

Male Rape at Abu Salim Prison
Araya Human Rights Organization reports, Oct. 3 the story of "eyewitness 1":

- Taken by force to the criminal investigation general administration –Tripoli.

- Confined to a collective crowded cell with neither places to sit nor to sleep.

- Bad smells intensively and intentionally hurt the prisoners.

- Garbage, rubbish, and waste products were accumulating and amassing every day, when prisoners asked to remove these material they were answered “shut up O’garbages” .

- Limited meals and drinks, just few loaves of bread, cheese and water.

- The guardians were all black skinned, non-Arabic speakers.

- Ten prisoners were raped and filmed to compel the others to stop talking about these crimes.

- A cousin of the witness (who had helped bringing the witness to the prison) visited him in the prison warning him that he would face the same fate if he didn’t accept to fight with Al-Gheddafi brigades, our witness said yes I would, he got out of the prison and fled immediately to Tunisia.

- Unfortunately, the witness family still supporting Al-Gheddafi and refused to receive our witness calling him a traitor.

Did they add "liar?"