Gaddafi raped schoolgirls, used them as sex slaves, reveals French writer

Paris: A French reporter Annick Cojean has revealed how former Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi used beat and rape kidnapped schoolgirls whom he used as sex slaves in between checking his emails. In her new book, French reporter Annick Cojean gathered horrific accounts from the girls forced into Gaddafi's harem. One victim, named as Soraya, was 15 when she was abducted in 2004 by Gaddafi's talent scouts' after she was chosen to give him a bouquet when he visited her school. Gaddafi had accepted the gift before placing his hand on her head, a sign she now realises meant 'I want this one'. The next day women in uniform appeared at her mother's hair salon in Sirte and explained Gaddafi or The Guide, wanted her for another 'bouquet ceremony'. She was driven for hours through the desert, had blood taken and her breasts measured before being stripped and shaved. After being dressed in a thong and low-cut white satin dress, Soraya was escorted to Gaddafi's bedroom and was shocked to find him naked. 'He grabbed my hand and forced me to sit next to him on the bed,' she recounts, adding: 'I didn't dare look at him. 'He said, "Don't be afraid. I'm your papa. That's what you call me, isn't it? But I'm also your brother and your lover. I'm going to be all that for you. Because you are going to stay and live with me forever."'Initially she fought him off and was sent off for lessons from Mabrouka, a sour-faced woman in charge of his 'harem'. He had said: 'Teach her, educate her and bring her back.' Describing herself as a 'sacrificial lamb' Gaddafi repeatedly raped, beat and urinated on the teenager during her five years in captivity, according to the book Les Proies: Dans le harem de Kadhafi (Prey: In Gaddafi's Harem). Sometimes other girls would join them. When another girl performed oral sex on Gaddafi he would tell Soraya to 'Watch and learn,' while Mabrouka gave her porn films to watch as 'homework'. Another victim, Houda, who was 18 when she met Gaddafi said he abused her for five years after she agreed to have sex with him if he freed her brother. Well known as a tyrant, the women's accounts have helped to paint Gaddafi - or Papa Muammar as he liked to be called - in an even more monstrous light, outing him as a repugnant sadist for whom rape was a daily activity. One girl describes how she was forced to wear lacy underwear and watch porn films. She added that Gaddafi had 'needed' several girls every day.He also raped boys, sometimes in Soraya's presence. The book also reveals how Gaddafi's sex slave victims are still suffering after being rejected by their families for having sex when they were not married. Soraya says she lives in fear of her brothers, who may want to kill her to 'wipe away the shame'. Female visitors were routinely subjected to blood tests by Gaddafi's nurses to make sure they were disease free in case he wanted to have sex with them. Marie Colvin, the Sunday Times journalist killed in Syria last year, reported that a nurse had approached her with a needle when she was in Tripoli to interview Gaddafi. She declined to give blood. When he was alive, Gaddafi was always surrounded by uniformed women, but far from being security guards they were his sexual playthings kept at the dictator's beck and call, according to the book. It also describes how Gaddafi kept a secret flat at Tripoli University to 'entertain students'. Cojean, a reporter for French newspaper Le Monde, said the accounts is the book had been one of her 'most painful investigations'. In an interview with France24, she said: 'For Gaddafi, rape was a weapon...a way of dominating others - women, obviously, because it was easy, but also men, by possessing their wives and daughters.'