GHEDDAFI'S HAREM AND AMICK COJEAN

The horror started with the lightest
of touches. As the 15-year-old schoolgirl held out the bouquet to the
62-year-old man, he took her free hand and kissed it gently.

The
man was Muammar Gaddafi, the dictator of Libya who had seized power 35
years before. His people were forced to call him the Guide, but the rest
of the world knew him simply as Colonel Gaddafi.

That
morning in April 2004, Gaddafi was visiting a school in his home town
of Sirte, on the Mediterranean coast 350 miles east of Tripoli.

Glamour: Some of Colonel Gaddafi's guards. Others were horribly attacked by the Libyan dictator

The girl had been selected to present the Guide with gifts and flowers, and it was considered a privilege.

Before Gaddafi arrived, she was
trembling with nerves, and she continued to tremble as he looked her
coldly up and down. He squeezed her palm and then her shoulder, before
gently patting her head.

At the time she was euphoric. To have been touched by the Guide! It was a real honour.

Tyrant: Gaddafi abused women on massive scale after coming to power aged just 27

She had no idea that the pat on the head, seemingly so paternal, actually signified something far more sinister.

The
car arrived the next afternoon. The girl was working at her mother’s
hairdressing salon when in walked three women, one of whom was dressed
in a military uniform.

The
women told the girl’s mother that her daughter was needed to present
another bouquet to ‘Papa Muammar’ because she had conducted herself so
‘beautifully’ the previous day.

Despite the mother’s protestations, the girl was driven away at high speed to an encampment in the desert.

There
she was once more introduced to Gaddafi, who was sitting in a red chair
holding a TV remote control. He looked her up and down and barked to
one of the women: ‘Get her ready!’

Now
terrified, the girl was taken away and undressed. Her measurements and a
blood sample were taken, then her entire body was shaved except for her
pubic hair.

She
was made to wear a G-string and a low-cut dress, and make-up was
plastered on her face. She was then shoved into Gaddafi’s room.

To
her disgust and shock, he was lying naked on his bed. The girl
immediately tried to run out, but one of the female helpers grabbed her
and insisted that she did what was required.

The
girl sat next to Gaddafi on his bed and he started to kiss her. She
remained frozen with fear until eventually she could take no more and
pushed him away.

A struggle ensued until a female helper appeared.

‘Look at this whore!’ Gaddafi snapped. ‘Educate her! And then bring her back to me!’

The following evening, Gaddafi beat  the girl and then got what he wanted.

‘I
will never forget that moment,’ the girl later recalled. ‘He violated
my body, but he pierced my soul with a dagger. The blade never came
out.’

Sham: In public, Gaddafi claimed to have women's rights at his heart. In
1981, he said that he had decided 'to wholly liberate the women of
Libya in order to rescue them from a world of oppression and
subjugation'

Such a tale might seem like something
from the imagination of a particularly  lurid and sadistic
porn-ographer but, horrifically, it is true.

Though
we do not know the girl’s real name, in a powerful new book called
Gaddafi’s Harem, written by the French journalist Annick Cojean, she is
simply called Soraya.

Cojean
met Soraya in Tripoli in October 2011 and was immediately struck by her
great beauty: apparently, she resembles the actress Angelina Jolie.

When
Soraya told her story, Cojean did not doubt it for a second, as she
 had heard many similar tales of  Gaddafi’s crimes before — but only
second-hand, never from the victims themselves.