Claims of Wartime Rapes Unsettle and Divide Libyans

[Prometheus Bound]

Claims of Wartime Rapes Unsettle and Divide Libyans
By KAREEM FAHIM
Published: June 19, 2011

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Amnesty International said its researchers had not turned up “significant” evidence to support the claim of mass rapes. And M. Cherif Bassiouni, chairman of a United Nations commission investigating human rights violations in Libya, said he and his team had so far interviewed only one victim and had been told about a handful of other cases.

“I’m not saying it isn’t true,” he said in an interview. “I’m saying I don’t have the evidence for it yet.”

.....Much of the controversy — as well as the early, unconfirmed evidence of mass rapes — has centered on the work of a Libyan psychologist in Benghazi, Dr. Seham Sergewa. ....But other doctors have attacked her research and methods, saying it seems unlikely that she could have distributed so many surveys, even in the best of times. The doctors, including the head of Benghazi’s Psychiatric Hospital, Dr. Ali M. Elroey, say she has been unwilling to open her research for peer review.

“I find it a bit exaggerated,” Dr. Elroey said in an interview at the hospital, where Dr. Sergewa, until recently, kept a small office. “I don’t think in three weeks you can distribute that many fliers.”

.....In its report from Libya, Mr. Bassiouni’s team noted that there were also allegations of rapes committed by rebel fighters.The story of one woman who said she was raped by Qaddafi loyalists underscored the challenges facing victims and people trying to help them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/20/world/africa/20rape.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1