Iman al-Obeidi

Iman al-Obeidi (also spelled Eman al-Obeidy; ; born circa 1982) is a former Libyan postgraduate law student who received worldwide media attention during the Libyan Civil War. This was because she burst into the restaurant of the Rixos Hotel in Tripoli and told the international press corps there that Libyan troops had beaten and gang-raped her. Her public statement challenged both the Gaddafi government and the taboo against discussing sex crimes in Libya.

Government security forces dragged her out of the hotel to an unknown destination, and attacked journalists who tried to help her. Government representatives claimed she was drunk, mentally ill, a prostitute, and a thief, and said she would be charged with slander. The Washington Post described her as a "symbol of defiance against Gaddafi."

She was released from government detention after three days, and was interviewed several times by Libya TV—an opposition satellite channel—and by CNN, during which she offered graphic details of her rape and subsequent detention by government officials. She fled Libya with a defecting military officer, who helped her cross into Tunisia, dressed in a Berber tribal costume to hide her identity. She was initially offered protection by European diplomats in Qatar and applied for refugee status there. After initially protecting her, in early June 2011 Qatar forcibly deported her back to Libya. On June 4, 2011, she was granted asylum in the United States with the help of Hillary Clinton.

Al-Obeidi settled in Colorado under the name Eman Ali. She was later charged with a number of violent offenses, including a February 2014 assault on two patrons at a downtown bar in Boulder, Colorado for which she was convicted in May 2015 of a Class 4 felony. She graduated in law from the Omar Al-Mukhtar University in Bayda, and had been living in Tripoli for the past year with her sister, Amal, either interning at a law firm or working in a tourism office, while pursuing postgraduate studies.

March 2011 controversy

Appearance at the Rixos Al Nasr hotel Al-Obeidi entered the Rixos Al Nasr hotel on March 26, 2011, later telling CNN she had gained entry by pretending to be a member of staff. After finding foreign journalists in the restaurant, she showed them her injuries, which The New York Times described as "a broad bruise on her face, a large scar on her upper thigh, several narrow and deep scratch marks lower on her leg, and marks that seemed to come from binding around her hands and feet." She was held for two days, during which she said she was tied up, urinated and defecated upon, and raped by 15 men, some of them videotaping the attack. She said local residents near the place she was held had helped her escape.

There was a scuffle in the hotel as government officials and hotel staff tried to silence her. Several journalists were kicked, punched, and knocked over as they tried to help or speak to her. Security forces punched Jonathan Miller of Channel 4 News in the face for coming to her defense, pushed Charles Clover of the Financial Times to the ground and kicked him, smashed a CNN camera, and pointed a gun at a television crew.

After journalists demanded to see her, Libyan Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim told CNN that five men, including the son of a high-ranking Libyan police officer, had been arrested in connection with the alleged rape. Kaim said al-Obeidi was being held at the headquarters of Libyan National Intelligence, but then suggested she was a thief and a prostitute This was rejected by al-Obeidi's 21-year-old sister Mawra: "We come from a good family. We study at university. Is this the type of people who engage in such horrible acts?"

Ibrahim expressed frustration about the international furore over al-Obeidi while Libya was suffering daily air-raids and massive civilian casualties. On March 27 he said al-Obeidi had been released and was with her sister. On March 28 her parents denied this, saying she was being held at Gaddafi's compound in Bab al-Azizia.

Release from detention, interviews

April 3: Telephone interview with Libya TV Al-Obeidi was first heard from again in public on April 3, when she talked by telephone to Libya TV, a new opposition satellite channel. During an emotional interview, she told them she had been in government detention for three days, but had been released and was in Tripoli; she said the Attorney-General had refused a request for her to visit her family in Tobruk. She said that during her detention she had been interrogated by Libyan intelligence—the Jamahiriya el-Mukhabarat—as well as the Criminal Investigation Department, and the Directorate of Security. Their "only request," she said, was that she "come out on the Libyan state channel and say that those who kidnapped [her] were not from Gaddafi's security forces, rather they were from the revolutionaries and armed gangs." She refused. She said a medical examiner confirmed her rape claim and the Attorney-General's office said it would "take all necessary measures to arrest those who were responsible."

During the first telephone interview, she offered graphic details of her ordeal at the hands of 15 members of Libya's security forces. She said they poured alcohol into her eyes so she could not see them; raped her; sodomized her with a Kalashnikov; tied her up; bit her; and would not allow her to use the bathroom, eat, or drink. "One man would leave and another would enter," she said. "He would finish and then another man would come in." She said they told her: "Let the men from Eastern Libya come and see what we are doing to their women and how we treat them, how we rape them."

April 6: On-camera interview with CNN Nic Robertson and cameraman Khalil Abdallah of CNN recorded an on-camera interview with her on April 6, an interview arranged by Al-Saadi Gaddafi, one of Gaddafi's seven sons. He made his office available and sent a car for al-Obeidi. Transmission of the interview was delayed by 18 hours because Saadi Gaddafi wanted the Libyan government to review it. A spokesman did look at it and was heavily critical, but Gaddafi waved that off, according to Robertson. It was first broadcast on April 7, the first time al-Obeidi had been seen by the wider public since March 26. Ten seconds of the interview—during which al-Obeidi expressed support for people in the rebel-held east of the country and in Misrata—triggered an objection from Gaddafi. Al-Obeidi did not consent to her comments being removed, and said if they were, she would withdraw consent for the entire interview, but she later agreed to the removal so long as the interview made clear which comments had been cut.

April 11: Interview with NPR and AP On April 11 al-Obeidi gave her first uncensored interview since March 26, after Lourdes Garcia-Navarro of National Public Radio and an Associated Press reporter managed to avoid their government minders to interview her. Al-Obeidi repeated many of the details she'd given in previous interviews, and added that the most brutal of her attackers was the son of a government minister. She also explained how she had escaped. She told NPR that, after the 16-year-old girl held with her untied al-Obeidi's hands and feet, she managed to jump out of a window, covered only in a tablecloth. The compound was surrounded by a wall, and there were two African guards sleeping by the electric gate. She said she grabbed a piece of metal and ran at them, screaming, and they opened the gate for her. After that, she was helped by people in the neighborhood, who put her in a taxi, paid the fare, and told the driver to take her to the Rixos Hotel.

She told NPR she was under intense pressure to recant her allegations; even her own lawyers want her to change her story. Garcia-Navarro reported that the government no longer denies al-Obeidi was raped, but continues to discredit her. She interviewed government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim, who said al-Obeidi "has a file" proving that she was a prostitute.

Escape from Libya On May 8, 2011, CNN announced that on May 5, she had escaped to Tunisia with the help of a defecting military officer and Libyan rebels. She wore a traditional Berber headdress to cross the border, which concealed her face, apart from one eye. According to CNN, after fleeing to Tunisia, she was met at the border by French diplomats, who handed her off to Transitional National Council officials who helped her escape to Qatar.

On June 2, Sybella Wilkes, a spokeswoman for the UNHCR, said that al-Obeidi had been deported from Qatar and was back in Libya, in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi. Reportedly, the National Transitional Council had pressured the Qatari government, which is allied with the rebels, to deport her. She had been in Qatar awaiting resettlement as a refugee. A refugee agency helped al-Obeidi to settle into life in the USA. In 2012, al-Obeidi lived in Denver where she was studying ESL.

As of 2014, she was residing in Boulder, Colorado and was living on a monthly stipend of $1,800 from the Libyan embassy.

Response

Governments and international organizations The Libyan National Transitional Council released a statement on March 27, 2011, condemning the treatment of al-Obeidi as "criminal, barbaric, and an unpardonable violence against her dignity, the dignity of the Libyan people, and all of humanity" and demanding the immediate release of both al-Obeidi and all other women, children, journalists, and civilians being held by Gaddafi and his regime.

Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague said incidents of such sexual violence in Libya were a demonstration of Gaddafi government's "absolute disregard for any understanding of human rights." The Human Rights Sub-Committee of the European Parliament demanded her immediate release, and said the incident was "emblematic of the situation of dissident women in Libya." Amnesty International called al-Obeidi's story "stomach-churning", and demanded that she be released that an investigation be opened.

A number of hashtags associated with her story appeared on Twitter, including #EmanAlObeidy, #EmanAlObeidi, #EmanAlObaidy and #WhereIsEmanAlObeidy.

Public protests

A group of mostly women in Benghazi marched with posters in support of al-Obeidi on March 27.

On March 30, a group of North African women held a rally along Pennsylvania Avenue near the White House. They dismissed the Libyan officials' allegations that al-Obeidi was drunk, mentally unstable, or a prostitute, as signs of oppression, and said that "what happened to Eman has been happening to thousands of male and female Libyans. That's how Gadhafi retaliates against civilians, by violating their honor." The group said they planned to rally every week until al-Obeidi was found.

Recognition Recognizing the prominence that Iman al-Obeidi incident gained worldwide, BBC included her in the list of "Faces of the year 2011", or women who made international headlines, for the month of March. The list featured al-Obeidi along with US Congresswomen Gabby Giffords and Michele Bachmann, Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, and Prince Albert of Monaco spouse Charlene Wittstock.

Position of sex-crime victims in Libya David Kirkpatrick of The New York Times writes that rape is often seen in Libya as a crime against the honor of a woman or her family, rather than an attack against an individual. Women who have been raped risked being shunned, or forced to marry the rapist. They may be confined for years in rehabilitation centers, where according to human rights advocates they are deprived of education except for lessons about Islam, placed in solitary confinement or handcuffed if they resist, and subjected to what Kirkpatrick calls unscientific virginity tests. They are allowed to leave only when released by a husband, or when a man offers to marry them. Kirkpatrick writes that, according to one Human Rights Watch source, men arrive at the centers looking, in part, for docile wives.

Prior to this incident, she had been arrested three times in Colorado: for disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and assault. In the second of these incidents, in August 2013, she was initially charged with second-degree felony assault on a police officer and misdemeanor counts of third-degree assault, obstructing a police officer and resisting arrest. The following September, the charges were reduced to a single misdemeanor count of attempted third-degree assault to which al-Obeidi pleaded guilty, and the court imposed one year of probation and ordered her to seek mental health counseling and help for alcohol abuse. While still on probation and while on bond for the February 2014 assault, she was arrested in November 2014 for having tested positive for opiates and alcohol. However, after violating the terms of that program, al-Obeidi was confined at the Boulder County Jail in January 2015.

On September 2, 2015, al-Obeidi was sentenced in Boulder District Court to 6 years in prison for the February 2014 assault. In denying a request by al-Obeidi's attorney Eric Zale for reconsideration of the sentence after 120 days and possible probation, Judge Andrew Macdonald said, "It's terrible, I don't know how else to describe it... It is really clear to me that Ms. Ali has a pretty serious mental health issue, most likely related to the trauma in Libya. But it's also concerning that she is refusing to get treatment." Concluding the hearing, Judge Macdonald told al-Obeidi, "I have grave concerns that when you get out, you'll be right back in this situation."