THE TIMES UK
Sex slave tells of Gaddafi's sadism
BY: MATTHEW CAMPBELL From: The Australian September 24, 2012 12:00AM
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A FEW days after Soraya turned 15, her headmaster announced that "the Guide", as Libya once referred to Muammar Gaddafi, would be visiting the school the next day.
She had been picked to give him the welcoming bouquet.
It was a great honour and Soraya was filled with excitement as teachers dressed her in a Bedouin costume. Today she is horrified as she recalls the day her childhood was stolen.
"I was a sacrificial lamb," she says, describing how, after being patted on the head by Gaddafi, she was press-ganged into his entourage to serve as a sex slave.
The late dictator has long been known to have been a monster but Soraya's story, told for the first time in a book published in France last week, has helped illuminate a lesser-known dimension of his brutality, exposing him as a sadistic sex criminal for whom rape was routine.
The book, by French journalist Annick Cojean, is a shocking glimpse into the psyche of "Papa Muammar", as his victims were encouraged to call him.
He not only stole Soraya from her family, he also repeatedly raped and beat her. Often he urinated on her. It went on for more than five years and Soraya's suffering continues: she is considered to have dishonoured her family because she lost her virginity outside marriage.
Now 23, she lives in fear of her brothers; they may want to kill her to "wipe away the shame".
Such rigid social mores make rape a taboo and even since Gaddafi's killing last year, few of his victims are willing to speak. This makes Soraya's testimony, albeit under an assumed name, all the more extraordinary.
For the dictator, schools were not centres of learning but hotbeds of carnal possibility. Soraya's fate was sealed that morning in April 2004 when Gadaffi beamed at her as she handed him flowers. Putting his hand on her head, she came to learn, was a signal to his henchmen: "I want that one."
The next day, women in uniform appeared at the hair salon run by Soraya's mother in the town of Sirte. The Guide, they explained, wanted to see Soraya for another "bouquet ceremony". Refusal was not an option. They drove her for hours through the desert.
Soraya was perplexed when someone asked: "Is she the new one?" She was even more perplexed when a woman took a blood sample from her arm. Another woman asked for her bra measurement then stripped and shaved her.
They dressed her in a thong and a low-cut white satin dress. She remembers thinking when they put on the lip gloss: "Mama wouldn't approve of that." She was told: "The master is waiting." Escorted to Gaddafi's bedroom, she was shocked and embarrassed to see that he was lying on the bed, naked: "I hid my eyes and thought, 'It's a horrible mistake'."
She went on: "He grabbed my hand and forced me to sit next to him on the bed. I didn't dare to 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'."
Then he tried to force himself on her but she managed to fight him off. He summoned Mabrouka, a sour-faced woman in charge of his "harem", and told her: "Teach her. Educate her. And bring her back."
Mabrouka slapped Soraya:
"Obey, or Papa Muammar will make you pay dearly." A nurse showed some sympathy, taking Soraya in her arms and murmuring to herself: "How can they do that to a little girl?"
The next day, when Gaddafi promised her diamonds, "a beautiful villa" and a car, she replied: "I want to go home to Mummy."
He told her: "All that is finished, you're with me now."
She fought him again and he sent for Mabrouka again.
On their third encounter he beat her into submission, raped her then told her to "get out". She was summoned the next morning as he ate a breakfast of garlic cloves. He told her to dance, then raped her. Taking her into his bathroom, he urinated on her.
A grim routine was established. Mabrouka would appear at Soraya's door, saying: "The master is waiting." Sometimes he gave her whisky and cocaine. He would rape her, then read for a few minutes or check his emails before resuming the assault.
Sometimes other girls would join them. When a girl performed oral sex on him, Gaddafi told Soraya: "Watch and learn."
Mabrouka gave her pornographic films to watch, saying: "It's your homework."
Eventually she was allowed to phone her family but she felt too ashamed to tell them what was going on. Besides, she was led to understand that any complaint from her family would mean their death.
Soraya said: "He needed girls every day," some as young as 13. He also raped boys, sometimes in her presence.
Cojean, author of The Prey: Inside Gaddafi's Harem, was on assignment for Le Monde when she met Soraya. She conducted numerous interviews over several months to break the taboo surrounding the dictator's sexual victims.
She concluded that no woman was safe. The wives and daughters of his ministers and generals were bullied into having sex with Gaddafi. Wives of visiting heads of state were lavished with gifts to seduce them. Some succumbed, says the author, quoting a former official who would not give names.
Female visitors were routinely subjected to blood tests by one of Gaddafi's nurses, apparently 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 this year, described a nurse knocking on her door one night and wielding a syringe when she visited Tripoli for an interview with Gaddafi. She declined to give blood.
He surrounded himself with female "bodyguards" but in reality these uniformed women were sexual playthings he kept at his beck and call, according to Cojean.
Soraya, too, was given a military uniform on a visit to Mali. "Look serious, attentive to everything that is going on around you," she was told.
The book describes how, for the dictator, visits to universities were a sexual adventure - he apparently kept a secret flat at Tripoli University in which to "entertain" students.
As for Soraya, she would have liked to tell her story in court. Instead, she lives in fear of reprisals.
THE SUNDAY TIMES
check emails and facebook, twitter in between the rapes?
I don't think this is credible.
I mean this shyt was already bad but 
Couldnt he had just married a bunch more young 20 somethings and fukked them? WHy they always gotta touch the kids? 
not the first will not be the last.
