TRIPOLI, Libya, March 26 (UPI) -- Libyan security forces dragged a bruised and battered woman away from a Tripoli hotel Saturday after she told foreign reporters she had been raped.
The woman's injuries, including bruises on her face and legs and rope burns, appeared to match her story, CNN reported. She said she had been kept prisoner for two days, her wrists and ankles tied with ropes, and that she had been sexually assaulted by 15 of Col. Moammar Gadhafi's soldiers after she was detained at a checkpoint.
She gave her name as Eman el-Obeidy and said she was from Benghazi, the eastern port that remains in rebel hands.
The woman entered the Rixos Hotel as foreign reporters and TV crews were eating breakfast. As she screamed at journalists that she had been assaulted, she was tackled by government employees there to keep watch on the foreign press and by members of the hotel staff, including one who yelled "traitor" at the woman.
Members of the press who tried to protect the woman were assaulted, CNN said. The news channel said one of its cameras was smashed.
Musa Ibrahim, a government spokesman, initially said the woman's story was a hallucination and suggested she was drunk, mentally ill or both, The New York Times said. Ibrahim later described the case as a criminal, not political, one, and said it was being investigated.
