Book Review: Muammar Gaddafi, a serial rapist

M. Gautham Machaiah

"He beat me up, raped me and urinated on me. I went back downstairs wet and wretched, convinced that no shower would ever wash me clean again."

This in a nutshell is the story of Soraya, who was kidnapped as a 15-year-old and violated, raped, brutalised and tortured for the next five years by the now deceased Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

In her book, Gaddafi’s Harem, The Story Of A Young Woman And The Abuses Of Power In Libya, French journalist Annick Cojean gives a gripping and blood curdling narrative of the illegal incarceration and repeated abuse of thousands of young girls at the hands of the very man who vowed to protect the rights of women.

Addressing the Military Academy for Women on September 1, 1981, Gaddafi who called himself Guide and Papa, thundered: “We affirm our respect for women and raise their flag. We have decided to liberate the women of Libya in order to rescue them from a world of oppression and subjugation. Today is the end of the era of harems and slaves.”

But in his own fortified residence Bab al-Azizia, Gaddafi held a harem of slaves some as young as 12 years old who were drugged, insulted, raped and subjected to the most savage treatment, until he was killed by rebel soldiers in 2011. The trauma of Gaddafi’s victims is well captured when Soraya says: “He violated my body, but he pierced my soul with a dagger. The blade never came out.”

Through Soraya, Cojean gives voice to thousands of victims who had to silently endure Papa’s sexual perversions. Officially, these young girls were christened ‘daughters of Muammar Gaddafi’, but once in his private quarters they were stripped naked and derisively called whores.

No woman who crossed Gaddafi’s path was spared. His cronies were constantly on the prowl for beautiful women across Libya. In one instance, the spouse of a General received an invitation supposedly from the dictator’s wife Safia Gaddafi. When she reached Bab al-Azizia, she was received by Gaddafi and raped. This continued for a few months, until his eyes fell on the little daughter of the General’s wife. The mother had no option but to sacrifice her daughter at the fiend’s alter.

In a country where it is an offense to have a physical relationship outside marriage, hymen reconstruction became a common phenomenon among victims who were fortunate not to be confined to the basement of Bab al-Azizia. Often, Gaddafi himself arranged their marriages.

One day, the Colonel assigned one of his guards as the husband of his victim Khadija.  Though she had no option, Khadiji looked forward to leading a respectable life with her husband. She had a little money which she spent on hymen reconstruction at a Tunisian hospital. On the day of her wedding while Henna was being applied she received a call from Bab al-Azizia, that the Colonel wanted to see her. She protested but had to ultimately relent under threats. “He forced himself on me once again. He had to ruin that moment. He had to show he was still under control.”  

Though the Guide painted himself as a devout Muslim, all his acts belied this. He never offered prayers and lived on a concoction of liquor, cocaine and Viagra. When a little girl innocently asked him if it was not wrong to rape her during the holy month of Ramadhan, he shot back “Ramadhan is only about eating, nothing else.”

Muammar Gaddafi is dead, but his victims live on, dying every day.

Gaddafi’s Harem, The Story Of A Young Woman And The Abuses Of Power In Libya
Annick Cojean
Penguin India
Rs 799