2023-11-13 05:35:25
In 2007, Muammar Gaddafi took over Seville like a cyclone. The Libyan dictator, a lover of show business and tinsel, appeared in the Andalusian city with an entourage of four hundred people and set up his ‘desert camp’ in the middle of the street, camel included. To make matters worse, he asked the government of José María Aznar for fifty Mercedes – he did not want other cars to get around the city – and several lambs to sacrifice “purely.” Spain put at their disposal a legion of National Police agents. However, he preferred the protection of his body by Amazons, about thirty virgin women who served as his praetorian guard.
The dictator’s private army was enlightened in the late 1970s, when Gaddafi assumed the title of ‘Fraternal Leader and Guide of the Revolution of the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya’. Its germ was a school… “In 1979 the Military Academy for Women was inaugurated in Tripoli as a symbol of female emancipation,” explains ABC in 2011. These were years in which the military had placed itself at the center of world attention. by becoming the flag of international terrorism. Tense and dangerous moments for him, in short. And he needed a guard to protect him.
Gaddafi always maintained that he created the unit with a single objective: the integration of the female sex in the country. “I promised my mother to improve the situation of women in Libya,” she explained at the time she created the Military Academy. The reality, however, still remains underground. For this reason, the stories surrounding the warriors of this private guard – called ‘Haris al-Has’ in the East – navigate between reality and fiction. At the time it was confirmed, for example, that they were virgins who took a vow of chastity and swore to give their lives for their leader. The dictator, lover of propaganda, fueled all these legends.
Trained for combat
In any case, the Amazons were well prepared, as journalist Jane Kokan explained in 1995: “They receive three years of training that includes the use of heavy artillery and rocket launchers, hand-to-hand combat and communications.” In the words of ABC, the students – around a hundred – lived in an academy created specifically for them. “They got up every morning at four-thirty to run for an hour and a half before classes started,” ABC explained. The best, supposedly, were selected by the dictator himself.
The problem is that, as several Amazons confirmed after the fall of the dictator, Gaddafi not only cared about the girls’ abilities… “We had to be tall, pretty and have long hair to be chosen,” explained another Amazon in a report for ‘The Guardian‘. The snapshots reveal that they were also very young. Between 19 and 21 years old, to be more exact. They were almost a kind of trophy that the military leader carried as part of his entourage when he traveled the world. “He used to reserve the most beautiful ones for his visits abroad,” this newspaper confirmed.
After his death, some still defended and adored him. «I fought for him and I am proud to have done so. He was a good man and he loved him », confirmed Jamila Calipha al-Arun.
However, the question is forced: were they real combatants or human trophies? It’s hard to know, since it doesn’t seem like they ever entered into combat. In fact, none of them protected the colonel when, in 2011, a mob pulled him out of a drainage pipe and lynched him. They broke their oath, either because they had died, been detained, or fled out of fear. One of the few times in which they did die for their leader was in 1998. On June 1, Gaddafi’s caravan suffered an attack perpetrated by Islamic fundamentalists. Although he only had to regret an elbow injury, one of his Amazons died.
Bitter ending
Gaddafi’s Amazons were forgotten for five years. After the death of their leader, they preferred to hide from the spotlight. In 2011, however, they came to light again thanks to the newspaper ‘The Guardian’. And it was not because of their loyalty or their training, but because they revealed that the dictator and the main leaders of the Libyan army had abused them during their service. The testimonies multiplied. «That was where they raped me. They would come, take us by the hand and walk us down the hallway. We knew what would happen,” explained Nisrine Gheriyanih, 19, just seven months after the fall of the old regime.
Nisrine Abdul Hadi, also 19, suffered a similar fate. «We had three jobs. Support the army, participate in ceremonial events and fight if necessary. She was raped repeatedly and was even forced to find minors for the tyrant’s private parties. Because, as she confirmed, they had a huge amount of hidden work.
Away from the cameras they were Gaddafi’s eyes and ears. His personal spies against those old warlords who longed to overthrow the dictator. “We were told to report anything strange we saw or heard to the family and not to talk to anyone about it. “It is possible that he trusted us, but also that he simply liked us,” Abdul explained.
As Miguel Muñoz explained in a report prepared for ABC in 2011, a total of five Amazons “reported that Gaddafi used to rape them and then handed them over to high officials” to do the same. “Seham Sergewa, a psychologist from Benghazi, is collecting the complaints to present them to the International Criminal Court,” the journalist added. The accusations were far from the initial basic precepts of the unit and, of course, from what the colonel had said about his Amazons and women in general: “We must train them for combat so that they do not become easy prey for their enemies.” enemies”.
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