“Revealed: Male Rape Used Systematically in Libya As Instrument of War: Videos and Testimony Expose Brutal Tactics Used by Several Factions in Fractured Country”, 2017-11-03 (; backlinks):
Male rape is being used systematically in Libya as an instrument of war and political domination by rival factions, according to multiple testimonies gathered by investigators. Years of work by a Tunis-based group and witnessed by a journalist from Le Monde have produced harrowing reports from victims, and video footage showing men being sodomised by various objects, including rockets and broom handles. In several instances, witnesses say a victim was thrown into a room with other prisoners, who were ordered to rape him or be killed.
The atrocity is being perpetrated to humiliate and neutralise opponents in the lawless, militia-dominated country. Male rape is such a taboo in Arab societies that the abused generally feel too damaged to rejoin political, military or civic life. One man, Ahmed, told investigators he was detained for four years in a prison in Tomina, on the outskirts of Misrata. “They separate you to subjugate you”, he said. “‘Subjugate the men’, that’s the expression that they use. So that you never hold your head up again. And they were filming everything with their phones. “They take a broom and fix it on the wall. If you want to eat, you have to take off your pants, back on to the broom and not move off until the jailer sees blood flowing. Nobody can escape it.”
…In one camp, south of Tripoli, a man called Ali recounted his experience. He was 39 but looked 65 and walked with a cane. “Some of us were locked in a room, naked, for a whole night with groups of migrants”, he said. “The guards did not release them until they had all raped each other. Fortunately, I didn’t go through that, I only got the stick and the wheel.” The “wheel” involved being put naked and folded double, through a tyre suspended from the ceiling, making it easier for torturers to penetrate him with weaponry. Ali said he now had physical problems, “leaks” as he called them.
In another camp in southern Tripoli, Fathia said women were not immune. She said her entire family was violated by a militia from Misrata, with the men being deliberately targeted. “They dragged me in the street, in front of everyone, saying: ‘You raped our girls. We’ll do the same thing to you.’ “The worst thing they did to me”, she whispered, “is to rape me in front of my eldest son. Since then, he won’t speak to me.” Asked about other inmates who suffered a similar ordeal, Fathia said: “I only heard men’s voices. They were screaming, day and night.”