Annick Cojean reveals the dark secrets of Gaddafi’s
harem
http://metro.co.uk/2013/10/17/annick-cojean-reveals-the-dark-secrets-of-gaddafis-harem-4148687/
Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi imprisoned schoolgirls
to abuse and rape on a daily basis, according to a new book by French
journalist Annick Cojean. The horrifying evidence of the late dictator’s serial
sex crimes came to light while Cojean was investigating incidents of rape
during Libya’s
2011 revolution: she has now revealed the details in her book, Gaddafi’s Harem.
‘Women who have been raped in Libya won’t
even discuss it with their family,’ she explains. So she was surprised when a
female doctor told her of a woman who was raped by Gaddafi himself.
Soraya was 15 when she first encountered the dictator.
Now 22, she is ‘angry, afraid and desperate because she wanted justice’, says
Cojean. ‘She wanted to confront him with the help of international justice and
ask why he’d done those things. But when he was killed she realised there’d
never be any justice.’
Soraya met Gaddafi when she presented him with flowers
at her school in Sirte. The father-of-eight patted her head in an apparently
paternal gesture. ‘Really, it was a sign to his guards to say: “I want that
one,”’ says Cojean.
The following day, guards snatched Soraya and took her
to a remote encampment where she was given a blood test (to ensure she was
disease-free) and dressed in lingerie. A failed rape attempt ensued. Shortly
after, Gaddafi assaulted her so badly that she needed medical treatment.
For the next five years, she was confined to a small
room in the basement of the Tripoli
base. Given porn to ‘learn from’ and ordered to consume alcohol and drugs,
Soraya was raped and beaten almost daily. She witnessed Gaddafi rape many
others, boys and men included. The young woman risked much to tell her story.
‘Rebels, pro-Gaddafi supporters – who keep a low
profile but still exist – clerics, Islamists, even relatives; there are many
dangers facing women who talk about being raped by Gaddafi or during the
revolution,’ says Cojean.
Another woman she met was raped, fell pregnant and had
the baby in secret. ‘If she’d had the child in a hospital she’d have been
arrested for having sex outside marriage,’ says Cojean. The baby was adopted
and the woman married a rebel soldier willing to ‘salvage’ her honour. Despite
this, her brothers found her and stabbed her. ‘There was no inquiry, no one
would talk about it,’ says Cojean.
Mansour Daw, Gaddafi’s former security chief, told
Cojean the dictator’s activities were so well known within the regime that
officials sent their daughters to be educated overseas to avoid him. Gaddafi
also tried to woo performers, TV presenters and wives of foreign dignitaries
with gifts.
‘He had his everyday prey but would also target this
more precious kind,’ Cojean says. ‘He used sex to humiliate, punish and reward.
Rape was a weapon of war and sex was a weapon of power for him.’
Cojean says the foreign interest in Gaddafi’s female
troop of bodyguards raises questions of how the international community
overlooked his behaviour. Frequently pictured with Gaddafi, the heavily made-up
guards were synonymous with his reign. Dubbed Amazonian guards in Europe, they were believed to be an army of virgins who
had taken a vow of chastity and pledged their lives to protect him.
‘Heads of state would talk about meeting Gaddafi and
his guard with a kind of fascination,’ says Cojean. ‘He’d set up meetings in
tents with camels outside and the guards on display. I am surprised people
didn’t question who these women were. It was obvious what he was doing – the
guard was the public face of his harem.’
First reactions to her investigation shocked Cojean.
‘People said: “That’s just what dictators do”,’ she says. A colleague told her
of similar stories about Saddam Hussein. ‘I said: “You have done 300 stories
about Iraq
but didn’t do one story about what you’d heard about this topic?”
‘He’s a good journalist but it says a lot about how we
treat these sort of crimes. A political prisoner being tortured is considered a
news story – but what about women who have been raped? I think it’s worth
writing about. The entire world has been kind of an accomplice. We need to
recognise these women’s suffering.’
Cojean’s book is now freely avail- able in Libya. In
February, a group of demonstrators in Tripoli
held copies as they demanded a law to protect women who have been raped.
‘Soraya’s voice has become louder and louder,’ says Cojean. ‘It is now possible
to face the truth.’
Gaddafi’s Harem is out now, published by Atlantic.
The Story of a Young Woman and the Abuses of Power in Libya Hardcover
http://www.amazon.com/Gaddafis-Harem-Story-Young-Abuses/dp/0802121721
Soraya was just fifteen, a schoolgirl in the coastal
town of Sirte, when she was given the honor of presenting a bouquet of flowers
to Colonel Gaddafi, “the Guide,” on a visit he was making to her school the
following week. This one meeting—a presentation of flowers, a pat on the head
from Gaddafi—changed Soraya’s life forever. Soon afterwards, she was summoned
to Bab al-Azizia, Gaddafi’s palatial compound near Tripoli, where she joined a number of young
women who were violently abused, raped and degraded by Gaddafi.
Heartwrenchingly tragic but ultimately redemptive, Soraya’s story is the first
one of many that are just now beginning to be heard. But sex and rape remain
the highest taboo in Libya,
and women like Soraya (whose identity is protected by a pseudonym here) risk
being disowned or even killed by their dishonored family members.
In Gaddafi’s Harem, an instant bestseller on
publication in France, where it has already sold more than 100,000 copies in
hardcover, Le Monde special correspondent Annick Cojean gives a voice to
Soraya’s story, and supplements her investigation into Gaddafi’s abuses of
power through interviews with people who knew Soraya, as well as with other
women who were abused by Gaddafi.
Annick Cojean
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annick_Cojean
Annick Cojean, née à Brest (Finistère) le 2 août 1957,
est une journaliste française, écrivain et animatrice de télévision, directrice
de la collection Empreintes sur France 5.
Originaire de Taulé, elle a grandi en Bretagne. Elle a deux
frères, Michel et Alain, le fondateur de la chaîne de restaurants Cojean.
Grand reporter au Monde, ses articles sur Lady Diana
Spencer, princesse de Galles, et sur la comédienne Isabelle Adjani, l'ont
rendue familière du grand public.
Elle vient de publier Les Proies, livre-enquête qui
dévoile la perversité sexuelle de l'ancien dirigeant libyen Mouammar Khadafi.
Elle signe le 6 mars 2014 un article retentissant dans
le Monde sur l'utilisation du viol comme arme de destruction massive en Syrie
au terme d'une enquête sur le terrain.
Annick Cojean
http://www.lemonde.fr/journaliste/annick-cojean/
photos
https://www.google.hr/search?q=annick+cojean&client=opera&hs=Bsv&channel=suggest&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=8qgkU_nmJIGCzAOer4LgBQ&ved=0CCcQsAQ&biw=1024&bih=615
Muammar al Gaddafi
https://www.google.hr/search?q=muammar+al+gaddafi&client=opera&hs=qzv&sa=N&channel=suggest&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&ei=zaokU7GIC-G8ygPPvYKIAQ&ved=0CCQQsAQ4Cg&biw=1024&bih=615
Colonel Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi
(June, 7th 1942 – October, 20th 2011) is best known as the de facto leader of Libya, from the
1st Sept.1969. till his death in 2011.
Astrology
http://www.astrotheme.com/astrology/Muammar_al-Gaddafi
Born: June 7,
1942, 8:35 AM
in:Qasr Abu Hadi (Libya)
Sun: 15°55' Gemini AS:
5°06' Léo
Moon:2°51' Aries MC:
27°28' Aries
Dominants: Gemini, Leo, Aries
Pluto, Venus, Mars
Houses 11, 1, 10 / Fire, Air / Fixed
Chinese Astrology: Water Horse
Numerology: Birthpath 11
Height: Muammar al-Gaddafi is
5' 8" (1m73) tall
Popularity: 46,133
clicks, 212th man, 377th celebrity
Muammar Al-Gaddafi Facts
http://biography.yourdictionary.com/muammar-al-gaddafi
Biography-mini form
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0300490/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
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Prince (musician), Liam Neeson, Anna Kournikova,
Roberto Alagna, Dean Martin, Tom Jones, Dave Navarro, Paul Gauguin, Michael
Cera, Karl Urban, Allen Iverson, Bear Grylls... List of all the celebrities
born on June 7.