Late Night BREAKING: Eman al-Obeidi interview with Anderson Cooper

Posted: April 4, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Breaking News | Tags: , | 17 Comments

Eman al-Obeidy rushed into a hotel in Tripoli, Libya, on March 26 and told journalists she had been raped by Gadhafi loyalists.

This is breaking on Anderson Cooper tonight — Eman al-Obeidi interview with Anderson Cooper:

(CNN) — Eman al-Obeidy, the woman who went burst into a Tripoli hotel to tell journalists she was beaten and raped by forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi last month, is no longer in custody but says she still fears for her life.

In two telephone interviews with CNN’s “AC360,” al-Obeidy spoke about her alleged abuse. At times in tears, at other times defiant, she recalled men pouring alcohol into her eyes and repeatedly using rifles to sodomize her. Al-Obeidy said has since been stopped trying to leave Libya and that she has nightmares.

One of the things I really appreciated about Anderson’s handling of the segment tonight is that even though he had to use the word “alleged” for the rape, torture, and abuse she told journalists of on March 26, Anderson was also very pointed in saying something to the extent of “Eman had the bruises and scars to prove it.”

Anyhow, the interview is really devastating content, so please be forewarned.

Eman’s responses to Anderson, and the details she relays of her treatment are beyond horrifying:

She told reporters she had been taken from a checkpoint east of Tripoli, held against her will for two days and raped by 15 men.

“They had my hands tied behind me and they had my legs tied and they would hit me while I was tied and bite me in my body. And they would pour alcohol in my eyes so that I would not be able to see and they would sodomize me with their rifles and they would not let us go to the bathroom. We were not allowed to eat or drink,” she told CNN’s “AC360,” speaking through a translator.

“One man would leave and another would enter. He would finish and then another man would come in,” al-Obeidy said.

She said another woman being held captive was able to untie her hands and feet, allowing al-Obeidy to escape.

I watched the interview being aired tonight, and Eman said the woman who freed her had earlier resigned herself to the raping and torture and didn’t fight back. That is how she was able to fly under the radar apparently to later free Eman.

As hard as this interview is to listen to, Eman is such a brave woman–her bravery comes through and through.

Here’s CNN’s quick overview of the new information gleaned tonight on this story:

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • NEW: Eman al-Obeidy says men used rifles to sodomize her
  • NEW: She says she has tried to leave Libya, but authorities have thwarted her attempts
  • NEW: Her father begs the international community to come to his daughter’s aid
  • Al-Obeidy says she was interrogated for 72 hours after being dragged from a hotel

Anderson was able to confirm from Eman that the footage earlier alleged to be of her, where she is seen refusing the government’s demands for her to recant her allegations, is indeed her.

Also here are more details on Eman’s so-called “release”…she’s basically under house arrest as we’ve been hearing:

Al-Obeidy said she is no longer in government custody and has spent time with her sister. But she said she cannot leave the house where she is staying as officials from the police or army will pursue her.

She said that when she tries to leave the house, officials chase her down and take her to a police station. But police don’t know what to do with her since she is not charged with a crime, and she is released.

Al-Obeidy said she has been abducted by Gadhafi forces three times — the first time from the hotel, the second time when she tried to escape to Tunisia last week and a third time on Sunday. She said the abduction Sunday and accompanying threats were an effort to prevent her from taking her complaints to a police investigations unit.

Eman further said she’s already lost everything. She is not afraid:

In spite of the danger, al-Obeidy said the most important thing to her is that her voice reaches the world.

“I would like to direct a word to all the people watching us in America that we are a peaceful people and we are not members of al Qaeda. We are a simple people and moderate Muslims — not extremists — and we are not asking for anything expect for our freedom and dignity and the most basic human rights which are denied to us,” she said.

There’s more at the link, so be sure to click over.

This is just a quick post to get the info up as soon as possible. I’m trying to locate videos of Anderson’s interview with Eman, so I can put them up here–I’ll update as soon as I can find them.

Libyan Woman Disappeared? (UPDATED)

Posted: March 26, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Breaking News, Libya, Violence against women | Tags: | 33 Comments

Eman al-Obeidy displayed a broad bruise on her face, a large scar on her upper thigh, several narrow and deep scratch marks lower on her leg, and marks that seemed to come from binding around her hands and feet. (Jerome Delay/AP)

Some very disturbing footage and developments out of Tripoli this Saturday.

Warning: This is a very grim story and the footage is raw.

The New York Times reports that a Libyan woman is dragged off by government officials as she tries to tell journalists that she had been tied up, urinated and defecated on, and raped by 15 of Gaddafi’s men:

TRIPOLI, Libya — A Libyan woman burst into the hotel housing the foreign press in Tripoli on Saturday morning in an attempt to tell journalists that she had been raped and beaten by members of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s militia. After struggling for nearly an hour to resist removal by Colonel Qaddafi’s security forces, she was dragged away from the hotel screaming.

[…]

She pleaded for friends she said were still in custody. “They are still there, they are still there,” she said. “As soon as I leave here, they are going to take me to jail.”

The NYT Lede has raw footage up here.

Lisa Holland filed this report from Tripoli for Sky News (post continues after youtube):

The bruises and injuries the woman showed to journalists match up with her story of being bound up, beaten, and raped.

From what I can make of the following reporting from Wapo and Forbes, Charles Clover of the Financial Times, one of the journalists attacked as he tried to intervene/report, had his recording device taken away by Gaddafi’s henchmen before he was deported. A CNN camera was also confiscated and the cameraman found himself at gunpoint when he tried to take it back.

Washington Post:

“I was tied up. They defecated on me. They urinated on me. They violated my honor,” she said.

But as she spoke, hotel staff members, security guards and government minders closed in on her and began dragging her away. Journalists who tried to protect her were punched, and one, Charles Clover of the Financial Times, was knocked to the ground and kicked. Shortly afterward, Clover was deported after being informed at 2 a.m. that he would have to leave the country because the government didn’t like his reporting.

Two waitresses grabbed knives and screamed that the woman was a “traitor” to Gaddafi, and one threw a coat over her head in an effort to silence her. Government minders, who are assigned to supervise and supposedly protect journalists, snatched a CNN camera and smashed it, and one of them pulled a pistol when the cameraman tried to take it back.

Eventually the woman, screaming, “They are taking me to jail,” was hauled outside to an unmarked saloon car, which whisked her away at high speed.

Kiri Blakely/Forbes blog:

In the ensuing chaos, reporters were beaten off and threatened as they tried to protect the woman and get her story, and hotel staff suddenly began working in tandem with security staff to get the woman off the premises. A reporter for the Financial Times had his recording device, which had recorded the woman’s testimony, wrested from him.

As Kiri Blakely goes on to report, Gaddafi’s regime is accusing the woman of being drunk and delusional:

The story is tragic and horrible, and I fear for the woman’s life. Adding yet another horrific, and all too common, element to the tale is that the woman’s testimony of sexual and physical abuse, reportedly backed up by physical evidence, was then dismissed as “fantasies” by the Libyan government. The government went on to say that the woman appeared “drunk” and “mentally ill.”

I will try to update this post or do a follow-up as more information becomes available.

UPDATE — Apparently Libyan government officials, now under media scrutiny and facing questions of where al-Obeidy is and how she is being treated, have referred to this as a case of rape — a shift from the ‘drunk and delusional’ narrative being pushed by the government earlier. Via Al Jazeera:

At a hastily arranged press conference following the incident, Moussa Ibrahim, a government spokesman, said investigators had told him that the woman was drunk and possibly mentally challenged.

Anita McNaught, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Tripoli, said: “The government initially suggested that she was drunk … but when they [officials] came back to the journalists later to reassure them that she was being well cared for … they did describe this as a case of rape.”

Also, more details on what al-Obeidy told reporters about the men from Gaddafi’s militia who attacked her:

Before she was dragged out of the hotel, al-Obeidi was able to tell journalists that she was detained by a number of troops at a Tripoli checkpoint on Wednesday.

She said they were drinking whiskey and handcuffed her and that 15 men later raped her.

Here’s the Al Jazeera report via youtube posted at the link:

BREAKING: Geraldine Ferraro Has Died

Posted: March 26, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Breaking News | Tags: , | 21 Comments

Sad news this Saturday morning.

NBC New York — Geraldine Ferraro Dead at 75:

Geraldine A. Ferraro, who earned a place in history in 1984 as the first woman to run on a major party national ticket for vice president, has died. She was 75-years-old.

Ferraro, who was born in Newburgh, New York, passed away today at Massachusetts General Hospital, surrounded by her loved ones, a statement from her family read.

The cause of death was complications from multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that she had battled for twelve years, her family said.

Geraldine Anne Ferraro Zaccaro earned a place in history as the first woman and first Italian-American to run on a major party national ticket, serving as Walter Mondale’s Vice Presidential running mate in 1984 on the Democratic Party ticket.

Though best known for her political achievements, Geraldine Ferraro started her career in public service upon graduation from Marymount Manhattan College in Manhattan, where she received her B.A. in English in 1952.

She became a New York City schoolteacher, teaching second grade at P.S. 85 in Astoria, Queens, part of the District she would later represent in Congress.

While teaching, Ms. Ferraro earned a law degree from Fordham Law School. One of three women in her class, she recounted that an admissions officer said to her, “I hope you’re serious, Gerry. You’re taking a man’s place, you know.” She passed the New York State Bar exam three days before her marriage to John A. Zaccaro, and practiced under the surname Ferraro as a tribute to her mother’s struggles as a widow to raise her.

Ms. Ferraro spent thirteen years at home raising her children, during which time she also practiced law pro bono in Queens County Family Court on behalf of women and children and served as President of the Queens County Women’s Bar Association.

In 1974, she was sworn in as an Assistant District Attorney in the Queens County District Attorney’s Office. There, she started the Special Victims Bureau, where she supervised the prosecution of sex crimes, child abuse, domestic violence and violent crimes against senior citizens.

Ms. Ferraro was first elected to Congress from New York’s Ninth Congressional District in Queens in 1978, and served three terms in the House of Representatives before being tapped for the Vice Presidential run.

In her second term, she was elected Secretary of the Democratic Caucus (now called Vice Chair).

Her committee assignments in Congress included the Public Works and Transportation Committee, Post Office and Civil Service Committee, the Budget Committee, and the Select Committee on Aging.

Her legislative achievements included creating a flextime program for public employees, which has become the basis of such programs in the private sector. She also successfully sponsored the Women’s Economic Equality Act, which ended pension discrimination against women, provided job options for displaced homemakers, and enabled homemakers to open IRAs.

From 1988 to 1992, Ms. Ferraro served as a Fellow at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics.

In October 1993, she was appointed the United States Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission by President Clinton, and served in that position through 1996. During her tenure, the Commission for the first time condemned anti-Semitism as a human rights violation and prevented China from blocking a motion criticizing its human rights record. Prior to her nomination as Ambassador, Ms. Ferraro served as a public delegate to the Commission in February 1993 and as the alternate United States delegate to the World Conference on Human Rights held in Vienna in June 1993. She was appointed head of the U.S. delegation to the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna shortly thereafter, and headed the delegation to China for the Fifth World Conference on Women.

From 1996 until 1998, Ms. Ferraro was a co-host of Crossfire, a political interview program, on CNN. She was also a partner in the CEO Perspective Group, a consulting firm which advises top executives.

In 1992 and 1998, Ms. Ferraro was an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic nomination to the United States Senate.

In February 2007, Ms. Ferraro became a principal in the government relations practice of Blank Rome LLP, where she counseled clients on a wide range of public policy issues. Prior to joining Blank Rome, Ms. Ferraro chaired the Public Affairs practice of the Global Consulting Group (GCG), a leading international communications firm.

In a statement released shortly after her death, her family said “Geraldine Anne Ferraro Zaccaro was widely known as a leader, a fighter for justice, and a tireless advocate for those without a voice. To us, she was a wife, mother, grandmother and aunt, a woman devoted to and deeply loved by her family. Her courage and generosity of spirit throughout her life waging battles big and small, public and personal, will never be forgotten and will be sorely missed.”

Here We Go Again …

Posted: March 20, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Breaking News, Gulf Oil Spill | Tags: , , , | 19 Comments

Mississippi delta saltwater marshes that can be found near Cocodrie, LA and Lake Barre

It appears that there’s an oil sheen just 20 miles north of the Macondo Well that blew up  and doused the entire eastern Gulf of Mexico with oil last year.  I’ve been getting some tweets from my local contacts and this is what I can put together so far.  It’s possibly a different well that’s owned by a different company.

Multiple callers have reported that they have seen a huge sheen of oil not far from a deepwater rig. According to Judson Parker at Examiner.com, the potentially leaky rig is the Matterhorn SeaStar owned by W&T offshore.

New oil has been spotted in Jefferson Parish.  It’s also impacting the beleaguered community of Grand Isle, Louisiana.  This is from WDSU. It’s a local New Orleans TV station.

Oil in various forms was reportedly coming ashore on the west side of Grand Isle on Sunday, a Jefferson Parish councilman said.Grand Isle Volunteer Fire Department personnel initially reported the incident, councilman Chris Roberts wrote in a news release.

The New Orleans newspaper–The Times Picayune–is reporting that both BP and the US Coast Guard are investigating.

The U.S. Coast Guard is investigating reports of a potentially massive oil sheen about 20 miles north of the site of last April’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion.

A helicopter crew and pollution investigators have been dispatched to Main Pass Block 41 in response to two calls to the National Response Center, the federal point of contact for reporting oil and chemical spills, said Paul Barnard, an operations controller for Coast Guard Sector New Orleans.

The first caller, around 11 a.m., described a sheen of about a half-mile long and a half-mile wide, he said.

About two hours later, another caller reported a much larger sheen — about 100 miles long — originating in the same area and spreading west to Cocodrie on Terrebonne Bay, Barnard said.

“We haven’t been able to verify that, and it would be very unlikely for an individual to be able to observe a 100-mile long sheen,” he said, adding inspection teams were en route around 3 p.m. to the site.

The Daily Mail reports that the slick is five miles wide and that the U.S. Coast Guard has taken samples from the sheen.

Casey Ranel, a spokesman for the Coast Guard said the agency sent out a cutter this morning to collect samples of the substance.

An airplane is also expected to fly over the area to give officials a better idea of what’s in the water.

Pollution investigators and a helicopter crew are following up on two calls to the National Response Center – the federal point of contact for reporting oil and chemical spills – Paul Barnard, an operations controller for Coast Guard Sector, New Orleans, told the Times-Picayune.

Barnard said a pilot flying over the area reported seeing a sheen of around half a mile long by half a mile wide.

So far, we’ve had coal mines implode and kill miners, nuclear reactor meltdowns, and at least one majof Gulf Oil spill ruining the ecosystem down here.  Can we get some safe energy sources now please?  At the very least, can we please have some effective and well-funded regulation of what we’re using now?  It seems like we’re still paying for the Energy industry Presidency of George Bush.  This isn’t change we can believe in.  This is no change that’s ruining my corner of the planet.

Four NYT Journalists Missing in Libya

Posted: March 16, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Afghanistan, Breaking News, Foreign Affairs, Libya | Tags: , , , , , , | 14 Comments

Anthony Shadid

This is very disturbing.

Four New York Times journalists disappeared while reporting on fighting in Libya, the newspaper said Wednesday.

Editors at the newspaper said they last heard from the journalists on Tuesday as they were covering the retreat of rebels from the town of Ajdabiya. Libyan officials told the newspaper they are trying to locate the four, executive editor Bill Keller said in a statement.

“We are grateful to the Libyan government for their assurance that if our journalists were captured they would be released promptly and unharmed,” Keller said.

The missing journalists are Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporter Anthony Shadid, the newspaper’s Beirut bureau chief; Stephen Farrell, a reporter and videographer; and photographers Tyler Hicks and Lynsey Addario. In 2009, Farrell was kidnapped by the Taliban and later rescued by British commandos.

Anthony Shadid has won two Pulitzer Prizes, including one in 2010 for reporting on Iraq at the Washington Post.

Lynsey Addario

Lynsey Addario is a brilliant photographer who was a 2009 recipient of a MacArthur “genius” grant. You can view some of her work here and here.

According to CNN,

Libyan government forces said Wednesday that they have no information about where the journalists may be and that, if they were picked up by the Libyan military, they would be returned to Tripoli.

CNN quotes from an e-mail Addario sent to CNN correspondent Ivan Watson on Monday:

Addario called the Libya story “one of the most dangerous” of her career.

The e-mail said, “qaddafi’s forces heading back east, and the rebels are surrendering along the way…so exhausted. this story has been one of the most dangerous i have ever covered. getting bombed from the air and by land, with no cover, and no flack and helmet.”

Of the other missing writer and photography, CNN says:

Farrell routinely reports from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq. Before joining The New York Times in 2007, he worked for the Times of London. In April 2004, he was kidnapped on assignment in Iraq.

Hicks, a staffer for the paper, is based in Istanbul and has served as an embed in Afghanistan.

Tyler Hicks

Here is a recent post at the NYT Lens blog, with photos by Tyler Hicks along with his reflections on covering the Libyan conflict.

Stephen Farrell was taken prisoner by the Taliban in 2009. The Guardian has a report about the British soldier who died rescuing Farrell in Afghanistan.

Stephen Farrell

There is some good news. Guardian UK journalist Abdul-Ahad has been freed.

Abdul-Ahad, an Iraqi national, and Andrei Netto, a Brazilian journalist, were taken into custody on 2 March.

They were held in a prison outside Tripoli after being picked up in Sabratha, a coastal town.

Netto was released last week, but Abdul-Ahad, an award-winning correspondent was held until Wednesday.

Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger has said that Abdul-Ahad “is safely out of Libya”.

The recent conflicts in the Middle East have been dangerous for journalists. I only hope that these four fine journalists will soon be found safe and unhurt.

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