The full horror of his brutality has been slow to emerge, with many Libyans still fearing retaliation by those
who continue to be loyal to their late leader. But it can now be revealed that the most heartbreaking of Gaddafi’s victims include hundreds, possibly thousands of teenage girls who, throughout his 42-year reign, were beaten, raped and forced to become his sex slaves.
Chilling: This is the bedroom in Gaddafi’s ‘sex dungeon’, decorated in 70s style with brown walls and a double bed, where he would take girls as young as 14 and sexually abuse them against their will
Degrading: This is the fully-fitted gynecological suite where young girls would be placed in one of the two beds and checked for STDs before they were sent in to the waiting dictator
Many were virgins kidnapped from schools and universities and kept prisoner for years in a specially designed secret sex lair hidden within Tripoli University or his many palaces. In the 26 months since he was deposed, Gaddafi’s den – where he regularly raped girls as young as 14 – has remained locked. But today its gaudy interior, where the colonel brutalised his victims, can be seen for the first time in photographs from a hard-hitting BBC4 documentary.
Inside the small, nondescript single-storey complex, the girls were forced to watch pornography to ‘educate’ them for their degrading treatment at the hands of Gaddafi. And even those who did manage to escape were often shunned by their deeply religious Muslim families who believed their family honour had been tainted.
When the dictator’s body was dragged through the streets by a baying mob, just hours after he was beaten and shot in the head, the hastily convened transitional government moved swiftly to seal off the sex dungeon. They feared the full extent of Gaddafi’s debased and lewd lifestyle would horrify the Western world and cause deep embarrassment to Libya.
‘Sexual deviant’: Colonel Gaddafi kept hundreds of girls as sex slaves during his years at the helm of Libya, but also kept a ‘harem’ of young boys. They, however, were the lucky ones. Other young victims were so badly abused that they were dumped in car parks and on waste ground, and left to die.
Gaddafi’s modus operandi was to tour schools and universities where female students were invited to his lectures. As he spoke before his hushed audience, he would silently scan the room seeking out attractive girls. Before leaving he would pat those he had ‘selected’ on the head. Within hours his private bodyguards would round up those chosen and kidnap them. If their families tried to keep them from Gaddafi’s clutches, they were gunned down.
One teacher at a Tripoli school recalled how the girls were all very young. ‘Some were only 14,’ she said. ‘They would simply take the girl they wanted. They had no conscience, no morals, not an iota of mercy even though she was a mere child.’
One mother, whose daughter was a student, said the community around Tripoli University lived in fear when a visit from the colonel was announced. ‘The girls he wanted would be rounded up and sent to him,’ she said. ‘One just disappeared and they never found her again, despite her father and brothers searching for her. Another was found three months later, cut, raped and lying in the middle of a park. She had been left for dead.’
Even today, the Libyan people are afraid to speak openly about Gaddafi’s depravity, fearing reprisals from his former henchmen.
But one woman – who was repeatedly raped by the despot over seven years from the age of 15 – has anonymously spoken of how he terrorised and abused her. She had been chosen to present the colonel with a bouquet when he toured her school in his home town of Sirte on the Mediterranean coast, 350 miles east of Tripoli.
When he patted her head afterwards, in an apparently paternal gesture, she thought she had pleased the man she and her fellow Libyans were forced to call ‘the Guide’.
The next day three woman dressed in military uniform arrived telling her parents she was needed to present more flowers. Instead, she was driven at high speed to Gaddafi’s lair. Once there, he barked at his women soldiers: ‘Get her ready.’
The girl was stripped, given a blood test and shaved of all but her pubic hair. She was dressed in a G-string, forced into a low-cut gown and had thick make-up plastered on her face. When she was shoved into Gaddafi’s room, to her horror he was lying naked on the bed. When she tried to run out, the women soldiers grabbed her and flung her back on the bed.
She was raped repeatedly during the seven years she was held captive, eventually escaping when a door was accidentally left unlocked.
Fuelled by cocaine and alcohol – and often Viagra – Gaddafi abused her horribly. ‘I will never forget that first time, that moment,’ she says. ‘He violated my body and pierced my soul with a dagger. That blade will never come out.’
It took the documentary-makers months of negotiations to be allowed access to information on Gaddafi as Libya remains secretive and hide-bound by bureaucracy.
Coerced: Gaddafi had a private all-female guard, some of whom he allegedly also abused, having ‘selected’ them from schools and universities across the country (file picture)
Ultimate terror: When a girl had been ‘selected’, Gaddafi’s guards would kidnap her from her family, take her to the dungeon, where she would be stripped, checked for STDs, shaved of all but her pubic hair, plastered in makeup and sent in to Gaddafi, a witness has said.
News-Portal Nigeria © 2014
No comments:
Post a Comment