Alleged Libyan Rape Victim: 'My Life is in Danger'

CNN reports:

Eman al-Obeidy, the woman who burst into a Tripoli hotel to tell journalists she was beaten and raped by forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi last month, is no longer in custody but says she still fears for her life.

In two telephone interviews with CNN's "AC360," al-Obeidy spoke about her alleged abuse. At times in tears, at other times defiant, she recalled men pouring alcohol into her eyes and repeatedly using rifles to sodomize her. Al-Obeidy said has since been stopped trying to leave Libya and that she has nightmares.

"My life is in danger, and I call on all human rights organization ... to expose the truth and to let me leave now. I am being held hostage here," she said. "They have threatened me with death and told me I will never leave prison again, if I go to the journalists or tell them anything about what's happening in Tripoli."

Al-Obeidy said she spent 72 hours under interrogation after being dragged away from the Tripoli hotel where she tried to tell journalists about her alleged abuse.

Interrogators poured water on her face and threw food at her during the relentless questioning, which ended only after she was examined by a doctor to prove she had been raped, al-Obeidy said. "And when the test came, it verified that I was raped and tortured ... then I was freed."

She said the public statements from a state TV anchor and government officials, who initially called her mentally ill, drunk and a prostitute, have ruined her reputation. Al-Obeidy said her spirits and morale are low and that she has nightmares now.

"They did not give me a chance to respond," she said.

The attempt to discredit al-Obeidy as a promiscuous, un-Islamic woman ties into the idea of sexual shaming in a conservative Muslim society where it's commonly believed that a woman who has been raped has lost her honor, said Mona Eltahawy, a columnist on Arab and Muslim issues.

For a woman in such a society to come forward to claim she has been raped is no small thing.

"No one would do that unless they were raped, and especially in a conservative society," Eltahawy told CNN.

Al-Obeidy burst into the Rixos Hotel in Tripoli on March 26 while international journalists staying there were having breakfast.

She told reporters she had been taken from a checkpoint east of Tripoli, held against her will for two days and raped by 15 men.