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Sunday, April 1, 2012

Gaddafi's Revolutionary Nuns: Raped by Gaddafi and Friends?

December 10, 2011
last update April 10, 2012

The late allegations that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi had sexuallyassaulted his famous female bodyguards could, as far as I know, be true. But they do have a troubling whiff of the demonizing claims so often proven false in other areas.

I haven't studied it closely, but need a spot to let some of my readers/contributors to do much of the work for me.

Five Speak Up
Gaddafi ‘raped’ his female bodyguards. By Mark Micallef, The Times (Malta). August 28, 2011.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110828/local/Gaddafi-raped-his-female-bodyguards.382085
Five women who formed part of Muammar Gaddafi’s select unit of female bodyguards are claiming they were raped and abused by the now hunted dictator. 
The women have told Benghazi-based psychologist Seham Sergewa they were sexually abused by Col. Gaddafi and his sons before being discarded once they were “bored” with them.

A pattern emerged in the stories. The women would be first raped by the dictator and then passed on, like used objects, to one of his sons and eventually to high-ranking officials for more abuse before eventually being let go.

The disturbing claims form part of a dossier being collated by Dr Sergewa for the International Criminal Court and possible trials that Col. Gaddafi and members of his inner circle may face in Libya if and when they are captured alive.

However, her work does not stop with the bodyguards. The women only stepped forward after the psychologist started investigating claims of systematic rape, allegedly committed by loyalist troops during the conflict.

No trial, but plenty of bullshit ready to go just in case. On the "dossier" of this Dr. Sergawa's (also given as Sergewa) it's been mentioned before, by people from the ICC (Moreno-Ocampo) and US State Department, for example. But it hasn't panned out very well on evidence and logic grounds, and that doesn't bode well for the veracity of this new alleged class-action accusation. Even the New York Times managed to convey previous skepticism of her sexual violence work in Libya, claiming to have located back in March at least 259 victims of systematic regime-ordered rape. As the UN's esteemed - and none-too pro-Gaddafi - investigator M. Cherif Bassiouni explained about Sergawa, without naming her:
[Bassiouni] also cited the case of a woman who claimed to have sent out 70,000 questionnaires and received 60,000 responses, of which 259 reported sexual abuse.

However, when the investigators asked for these questionnaires, they never received them.

"But she's going around the world telling everybody about it ... so now she got that information to Ocampo and Ocampo is convinced that here we have a potential 259 women who have responded to the fact that they have been sexually abused," Mr Bassiouni said.

He also pointed out that it did not appear to be credible that the woman was able to send out 70,000 questionnaires in March when the postal service was not functioning.
Tangentially Related / Possibly Confused Cases
See: Gaddafi's Girl Executioner: Really?

Another Non-Bodyguard, But Gaddafi-Related
Libya: Gaddafi’s Sex Slave Tells of Orgies and Rape
By Anissa Haddadi. International Business Times, November 21, 2011
http://uk.ibtimes.com/articles/253160/20111121/libya-gaddafi-s-sex-slave-tells-orgies.htm

This former five-year sex slave for col. Gaddafi, self-described, escaped and fled to France back in 2009. "She was able to return to Libya only when the Gaddafi regime collapsed."


7 comments:

  1. Here's a funny old video to accompany this slant...Tripoli Secrets Operations room and offices under the confidentiality at the University of Tripoli for Gaddafi's sons

    ReplyDelete
  2. These videos may be related to this topic.

    أسرار حارس القذافي الشخصي - صور فاضحة
    Gaddafi's personal guard secrets - obscene pictures
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwASanukKYk
    Uploaded by MrFreedomlibya on May 18, 2011

    (حارس القذافي الشخصي اشتيوي حرير ( فضيحة
    Gaddafi's personal guard Eshteiwi silk (scandal)
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuZ2yyQEnFU
    Uploaded by abuslam1 on Sep 13, 2011

    The videos contains holiday pictures taken at the Rixos Premium Belek resort in Turkey. The second video identifies one of the men as Gaddafi's personal guard. I do not know who the women are.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Here is an interview from Libya SOS that is directly related to this story.
    A SHOCKING interview with a girl who had escaped from Tripoli prison
    APR 9, 2012

    The original was published by Konstantyn Scheglikov on Facebook:
    Interview with girl, who escaped from rats prison

    Interviewer : There has been a picture showing a girl as they said jumped from either the second or the third floor because she tried to commit suicide . Is that you that girl ?

    Girl : Yes it was me…..yes of course.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That definitely sounds like Nisreen's story. If it's true, it's got some disturbing parts. Fascinating, thanks!

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    2. @ petri : I was checking Konstantyn Scheglikov yesterday because of his excellent translators : people for justice. It seems he is only reachable on FB. It would be nice if they would help here too.Do y have contact ideas ?
      Btw : he did get 1 bad mention on google.

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  4. Even in the western press--e.g., The Christian Science Monitor--Qaddafi has been praised for his treatment of women. Women had a better shot in Libya than in practically any other Arab/African country. Qaddafi favored equal rights for women. Although a chauvinist by western standards, he was certainly preferable than the misogynists who run Saudi Arabia.

    The macro-picture appears to be this: NATO commits a war of aggression, which is a war crime. Indeed, Justice Jackson at Nuremberg said it was the worst of crimes. In a variety of ways, attention has been directed away from this monstrous crime. The sex charges against Qaddafi fit into this pattern of drawing attention away from the real crime, NATO's probable murder of tens of thousands of Libyans. Indeed, Alexandra Valiente of Libya 360 and Viva Libya has said that NATO has killed more than 100,000 Libyans.

    For what it's worth, in 2011, an East European woman who claimed to have been Qaddafi's nurse for years said that he treated her very well.

    Finally, any testimonials which are lurid and lacking in objective, corroborative evidence should be viewed very skeptically.

    After all, how many lies do the anti-Qaddafi forces get to tell before we just dismiss them as liars? (I include Obama, Cameron, and Sarkozy in the definition of "anti-Qaddafi forces.")

    Art Bethea

    ReplyDelete

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