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.Tangentially Related / Possibly Confused Cases
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.
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."
