After struggling for nearly an hour to resist removal by Colonel Qaddafi’s security forces, she was dragged away from the hotel screaming.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
[UPDATE] Eman Al-Obeidy's mother and cousin have now spoken out to counter the government's smears. Details below the fold.
Eman Al-Obeidy is a woman who sought out foreign reporters in Tripoli today at their hotel, seeking protection and trying to tell her story.
She described being beaten and gang-raped for two days by Qaddafi's guards, after they detained her simply for being from eastern Libya. Reporters saw her bruises, and the rope burns on her wrists and ankles.
Within minutes, she was threatened with a knife by members of the hotel restaurant staff. Soon after that, the restaurant seemed to fill up with men who were obviously trained, plainclothes regime security. They overpowered the reporters trying to protect Eman, attempted to hood her, methodically destroyed CNN's camera, and eventually managed to hustle her into a car which took her away. Various videos of the incident survived and have been posted online.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/...
http://video.nytimes.com/...
Updates: Eman's cousin and mother have spoken out
http://feb17.info/...
Eman is her daughter. She has 7 daughters. Eman is a law graduate from Zawiya. And Amal is an English literature graduate, who works in Tripoli in the Administration of Supervison.
Eman goes to her sister (Amal) in Tripoli and stays with her since she (Amal) has kids. They are a conservative family, and always together. So the other day while she was passing through a checkpoint in Tripoli, they held her and raped her.... She visits her sister alot. Amal is married with children.
Her husband is Salah Al Deenali, who they (government) might say was killed. According to what Eman is saying they killed him and kidnapped her nephew as well.... After they took her away, her family held a funeral since they are assuming she is dead by now. The funeral is not only for her but for her sister’s husband. Her sister’s son is kidnapped as well. In the clip we saw, she said they killed Salah and they kidnapped Hamad.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Aisha Ahmed, contacted by telephone at her home in Tobruk, in the rebel held eastern part of the country, said she was proud of the courage displayed by her daughter, Iman al-Obaidi....Hasan Modeer, a rebel activist who was with Obaidi's mother in Tobruk, said a government official had called Ahmed at 3 a.m. Sunday, asking her to convince her daughter to change her story.
“They said they will give her a new house and a lot of money and anything she wanted,” Modeer said, adding that Ahmed had relayed the message to her daughter by phone but that Obaidi had refused.
“She said, ‘I will die rather than change my words,’ ” Modeer said.....
“Inshallah [God willing], I will see her again,” she said. “We will force Gaddafi down. France, Obama, America, please come and save my daughter.”
After major stonewalling, assertions that she was drunk and/or mentally ill, and a shouting match at a press conference, Libya has finally released an official statement claiming that Eman's case was a criminal one involving a small number of alleged rapists (she told reporters that some 15 men had assaulted her), and that it might be possible to see her in a few days.
Eman is but one of those abducted by regime forces in Libya in recent weeks. We have no idea how many of these people are still alive, or under what conditions they are being held. But even for Qaddafi the light of publicity might, perhaps, be enough to save a few lives - maybe even the life of this brave woman.
In any event, her story must be told.
What you can do:
- send tweets containing "#WhereisEmanAlObeidy" (if you're not on Twitter yet, it really is painless, and it's an astonishing organizing tool) to make this into a "trending" twitter tag and raise the profile of this horrific incident
- organize through this Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/...
- on Twitter and Facebook, the hotel is becoming a flashpoint for peoples anger because of their active complicity in Eman's abduction:
- "Please ring RIXOS HOTEL and tell them how you feel about their treatment of #EmanAlObeidi! Reception 00218213622902 Manager 00218914501693 "
- http://www.facebook.com/...
- "Please send an email to the hotel grm.libya@rixos.com"
- your suggestions below...
