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Monday 28 March 2011

She burst into a Tripoli, Libya, hotel over the weekend, pleading with journalists to tell the world that she was raped by government troops

El NACHO - 23:19

She burst into a Tripoli, Libya, hotel over the weekend, pleading with journalists to tell the world that she was raped by government troops. As security forces subdued the screaming woman and dragged her away, she warned, "If you don't see me tomorrow, then that's it."
Two days later, reporters have not seen Eman al-Obeidy.
The same government that took her away is insisting she is fine. But reporters and human rights activists have not been able to see her, and her whereabouts are unclear.
"I am not ashamed of my daughter," al-Obeidy's mother told Al-Jazeera television Monday. "I am proud of her because she has broken the barrier. She broke the barrier that no man can break. And those dogs there with him, Moammar, (are) the criminals!"
Al-Obeidy's family said she is a lawyer - and not a prostitute or mentally ill as Libyan government officials initially said after the incident. The government later changed its story, saying she was sane and was pursuing a criminal case.
Al-Obeidy's family said they were offered money if she would change her story.
"Yesterday late at night at 3 a.m. they called me from Bab al Aziziya," Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's compound in Tripoli, al-Obeidy's mother told Al-Jazeera. "And they told me: Make your daughter Eman change her statement ... and we will release her immediately and whatever you ask for you will get, whether money, or a new apartment, or guaranteeing financial security for you and your children. But just tell Eman to change her statement."
"I called my daughter and said, 'My daughter, stand firm! Stand firm!' She said, 'I will stand firm and I will never change my statement.' "
It was not clear how al-Obeidy's mother reached her by phone.
A government spokesman said Sunday that al-Obeidy had been released and was "with her family."
A group of lawyers and human rights activists tried to approach her sister's house Monday, but were blocked by security forces. Al-Obeidy's sister's mobile phone has apparently been turned off, a source with the Lebanese opposition in Tripoli told CNN. And no one has seen the sister since the incident at the hotel.

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