• …we shot every one of them in the leg. … Then the officers took the girls upstairs, and we were told to go on the roof [to keep guard] until the officers had finished the rape and then we were told to rape the girls too.
• A 17-year-old member of Muammar Gaddafi’s forces, currently in opposition custody • Describing what he saw as a soldier. Andrew Harding of the BBC News, who wrote this article, makes the point that he isn’t positive whether the young man was telling the truth, considering the vested interest opposition forces might have in coercing him to portray his former colleagues in the worst possible light. That said, his remarks about what’s been happening in Misrata (through an interpreter) are harrowing. He describes being instructed to rape women, on threat of being beaten if they refused. He admits to committing a rape himself, and claims to have received about $8 reward for it. It’s a gruesome read, but worthy of being informed about. These are hardly the first reports of rape to come out of Libya in the midst of its civil war, but this new suggestion takes the brutality to new, horrible levels. source

Posted by Chris Tognotti • Permalink