The horror started with the lightest of touches. As the 15-year-old schoolgirl held out the
bouquet to the 62-year-old man, he took her free hand and kissed it gently.
The man was Muammar Gaddafi, the dictator of Libya who had seized power
35 years before.
His people were forced to call him the Guide, but the rest of the world knew
him simply as Colonel Gaddafi.
That morning in April 2004, Gaddafi was visiting a school in his home town of Sirte,
on the Mediterranean coast 350 miles east of Tripoli.
Before Gaddafi arrived, she was trembling with nerves, and she continued to tremble as
he looked her coldly up and down. He squeezed her palm and then her shoulder,
before gently patting her head.
At the time she was euphoric. To have been touched by the Guide! It was a real honour.
She had no idea that the pat on the head, seemingly so paternal, actually
signified something far more sinister.
The car arrived the next afternoon. The girl was working at her
mother’s hairdressing salon when in walked three women, one of whom
was dressed in a military uniform.
The women told the girl’s mother that her daughter was needed to present
another bouquet to ‘Papa Muammar’ because she had conducted herself
so ‘beautifully’ the previous day.
Despite the mother’s protestations, the girl was driven away at high
speed to an encampment in the desert.
There she was once more introduced to Gaddafi, who was sitting
in a red chair holding a TV remote control. He looked her up and down
and barked to one of the women: ‘Get her ready!’
Now terrified, the girl was taken away and undressed.
Her measurements and a blood sample were taken, then her entire body
was shaved except for her pubic hair.
She was made to wear a G-string and a low-cut dress, and make-up
was plastered on her face. She was then shoved into Gaddafi’s room.
To her disgust and shock, he was lying naked on his bed.
The girl immediately tried to run out, but one of the female helpers
grabbed her and insisted that she did what was required.
The girl sat next to Gaddafi on his bed and he started to kiss her.
She remained frozen with fear until eventually she could take no more
and pushed him away.
A struggle ensued until a female helper appeared.
‘Look at this whore!’ Gaddafi snapped. ‘Educate her!
And then bring her back to me!’
The following evening, Gaddafi beat the girl and then got what he wanted.
‘I will never forget that moment,’ the girl later recalled.
‘He violated my body, but he pierced my soul with a dagger.
The blade never came out.’
Sham: In public, Gaddafi claimed to have women's rights at his heart.
In 1981, he said that he had decided 'to wholly liberate the women
of Libya in order to rescue them from a world of oppression and subjugation'
Such a tale might seem like something from the imagination of a
particularly lurid and
sadistic pornographer but, horrifically, it is true.
Though we do not know the girl’s real name, in a powerful new book
called Gaddafi’s Harem,
written by the French journalist Annick Cojean, she is simply called Soraya.
Cojean met Soraya in Tripoli in October 2011 and was immediately struck
by her great beauty:
apparently, she resembles the actress Angelina Jolie.
When Soraya told her story, Cojean did not doubt it for a second,
as she had heard many
similar tales of Gaddafi’s crimes before — but only second-hand,
never from the victims themselves....
[...]
Gaddafi (left) as a young man in 1973 shortly after seizing power.
He was known to abduct women from their own
wedding ceremonies as the ultimate show of omnipotence
Gaddafi was all too aware of this.
The wives and daughters of senior figures were blackmailed, bribed,
cajoled and forced into having sex.
Gaddafi not only enjoyed the act of degrading these girls and women,
but relished the power
it gave him over other men.
Some women were even abducted during their wedding ceremonies,
as the ultimate show of omnipotence.
As one of Gaddafi’s close collaborators admitted after the tyrant’s death,
sex was ‘all he seriously thought about’ and ‘he governed, humiliated,
subjugated and sanctioned through sex’.
In public, Gaddafi claimed to have women’s rights at his heart. In 1981.....
[...]
The harrowing story is told in the book Gaddafi's
Harem by Annick Cojean
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