Thaindian News

Tripoli, Mar 28 (ANI): The Libyan government has said that it has released the woman who had burst into a hotel full of foreign journalists to say that she was abducted and raped by militia members working for Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, after calling her “a known prostitute and a thief.”

Eman al-Obeidy became well known in Libya and across the world since the episode at the hotel on Saturday where she had displayed her large bruises on her face and legs claiming that 15 men had gang raped her.

“Look what Gaddafi’s men have done to me. Look what they did, they violated my honour,” she had said, adding that she was arrested at a checkpoint in the capital because she was from Benghazi.

“They swore at me and they filmed me. I was alone. There was whisky. I was tied up. They peed on me,” she added.

However, as she tried to talk, security officials and people who had previously appeared to be hotel workers tried to silence her, and at one point even attempted to put a coat over her head.

The New York Times quoted Obeidy’s mother, Aisha Ahmed, a resident of the rebel-held town of Tobrok, as calling her 26-year-old daughter who is a law student in Tripoli as a hero.

“I am very happy, very proud,” she said.

Women in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, mainly women, marched through the streets to highlight her plight, waving monarchy-era flags. One of the placards says: “Iman, you are not alone,” The Guardian reports.

Meanwhile, a government spokesman has said that Obeidi is now with her sister in Tripoli, and that four men had been interrogated in connection with the case, including the son of a high-ranking police officer.

The spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, also alleged that Obeidi was a prostitute who had refused a medical examination. (ANI)