Qaddafi victims demand justice - Libya

Victims of former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi's regime are demanding that their tormentors be put on trial.

Nadia Seif, a 59-year-old former prisoner and translator, was detained by Qaddafi's notorious intelligence service for seven months after they killed her husband for plotting to assassinate the late dictator.

Nadia's villa was seized, and she was held in a tiny cell, where she says she was raped twice by a guard.

Here in a small concrete cell in the Abu Salim prison complex in Tripoli, Nadia returns to visit the place in which she was interrogated, beaten and abused.

"I was taken to a prison, and this prison was only men and I was the only woman and I was raped in this prison and I was bleeding and they took me to hospital and the doctor was afraid to make an operation for me because I was very weak. They brought me back to the men's prison and after a while they took me to a place called Jdeidah (women's prison) and I stayed there for two years," said Nadia.

Nadia and her husband once lived with their sons in an up-scale neighborhood in Tripoli. Her husband opened a furniture shop after disapproving of and resigning from the intelligence service. He was later arrested along with others for suspicions of plotting to murder Qaddafi.

During Nadia's time in prison her sons stayed with their grandparents and her house was turned into a neighborhood interrogation center.

"In the new Libya, I'm asking that I should take my rights back. I should see the people who interrogated me, tortured me to take their punishment," Nadia said.

Nadia, along with other victims of Qaddafi's regime, are demanding their tormentors be put on trial, but prompt action seems unlikely.

After nearly 42 years of Qaddafi rule, Libya has emerged from an eight-month civil war of bloodshed, which killed tens of thousands.

International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo says he has evidence indicating hundreds of women were raped during the war and has promised to examine allegations of crimes committed by all sides.

By: Nadia Idriss Mayen
Al Arabiya with Agencies

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