A Step Closer to Justice for Libya’s Mass Rape Victims

[tabatha]

On November 9th, two female Libyan human rights lawyers scored a victory in a first-of-its kind lawsuit representing 15 Zwara women who charge mass rape by members of Qaddafi’s militia. Tunisia announced that it will extradite Qaddafi henchman Baghdadi Mahmudi to Libya to face a battery of charges, including those from the Zwara attorneys. Mahmudi, who held a variety of ministerial positions under Qaddafi beginning in 1992, including one equivalent to that of prime minister, fled to Tunisia on August 21st and on September 22nd was sentenced to six months in a Tunisian jail for entering the country illegally. The Tunisian government dragged its feet on the Libyan extradition request, and finally, on November 5th, Rebab Haleb, 31, and her law partner Zeituna Moammar, 42, organized an impromptu protest in front of the Zwara courthouse that attracted about 100 citizens of both genders—the first such demonstration in Zwara.

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blogs/ann-marlowe?utm_sour