WUNRN
UK - Medical Foundation for the Care
& Victims of Torture
WOMAN UNIVERSITY TEACHER'S STORY OF
TORTURE TRAUMA AS A POLITICAL PRISONER IN LYBIA
NAJLA'S STORY: OVERCOMING PREJUDICE
Her
quiet demeanour conveys a sense of calm and resolve, but it betrays the
unimaginable horrors that Najla had to endure before she could even come close
to reclaiming her identity.
The 31-year-old academic spent over six months in the most depraved conditions at the hands of the Libyan government. And her torment did not end with her escape; the next two years were spent "between the earth and the sky" as she struggled to relay her experience to those she thought would help her in the UK while she was accused by immigration officials of fabricating her suffering.
For Najla (not her real name), a political sciences graduate and human rights lecturer, her torture not only showed a complete disregard for human sensitivities but also led to a total desecration of a person's basic right to be believed. That need for validation, for someone to acknowledge her truth, is a theme that resonates throughout her moving story.
The day of her arrest was just another day at the university where she taught. She arrived at work to lecture her students on the principles of democracy in the Western world. A key part of the university's teachings focused on the Green Book, the philosophical musings of Col Gadaffi, which, like his speeches, claim to promote "direct, popular democracy". But like any military state that condones an excessive use of force to control political dissidents, the reality is far different.
Najla and a fellow university lecturer refused on principle to teach the students the Green Book's ideas of a utopia, based on governance by the people, because they knew the truth behind its claimed support for human rights - imprisonment for dissidents and routine torture. Instead, they sought to hold the government to account for its abuses and would regularly discuss such ideas with their students.
As a staunch believer in human rights Najla was an easy target of Gadaffi's regime, with an informer from the university, she believes, eventually leading security officials to her door.
On the day of her arrest a leaflet distributed to the students about a human rights talk was stolen from Najla's bag, then at lunch time, a group of plain clothes security officials arrived at her university office and escorted her off the campus.
She was driven to a building where she was held in a cell for two days. On the first day, she was subjected to six hours of interrogation, death threats and verbal abuse.
On the second day, a black plastic bag over her head, with her hands cuffed behind her, she was driven to another prison on the outskirts of town. It was here that Najla was repeatedly raped and beaten.
Imprisoned in a cell which the small-framed woman could barely stretch out her legs or stand, Najla lost complete track of time and was only able to measure out the days by how frequently she was abused.
That began soon after she arrived when she was ordered by one of the guards to take a shower. "I was thinking then, I know what is going to happen to me," she says. "You do not get asked to take a shower in front of these men for any other reason, I knew then I was going to be raped."
For the next six months, Najla was repeatedly taken from her cell every few nights and raped and beaten by up to 20 securities officers at their drink-fuelled gatherings. Any attempts to resist resulted in beatings and burns to her body.
In October, the security officials levied the charge of attempting to bring down the government with her subversive teachings against her. "Everything they said wasn't true," she says. "All we were calling for was modern freedom, real freedom, not just fake freedom for the sake of the media." When the securities officers threatened her with death, Najla signed a false confession but it had no effect - she was sentenced to death by hanging.
It was only then, after six months, that Najla was allowed a visit from her mother, who ultimately engineered Najla's escape by bribing a prison guard with US$70,000. "The guard told me that it was now my responsibility if I lived or died, I could be shot leaving the prison," says Najla. "I took that responsibility because I told myself it was like a game, death was the only end, there was no chance - if I got out I would be shot, if I stayed I would be executed."
Najla escaped by donning a disguise the guard provided and mingling with a crowd of women heading for the gate at the end of visitors' time. Outside the prison, she was met by an agent employed by her family, who took her to the airport, stopping en route so she could say a brief farewell to her mother and two sisters. "I was advised by my mother to do whatever he told me," says Najla. "She told me, he is the only person who can save your life'." It was the last time Najla was to see her family.
On her arrival in the UK four years ago, Najla experienced at first hand the difficulties of being an asylum seeker. Abandoned by the agent in London's Leicester Square, with only £20 in her pocket, alone and unable to speak English, she spent the night in a telephone box.
After registering her claim with the Home Office she spent the next eight months destitute, seeking refuge in churches and mosques while her application was scrutinised and challenged by officials.
Thanks to her own persistence, aided by the Medical Foundation and the efforts of her solicitor from the Refugee Legal Centre, the government's initial refusal to grant her asylum was finally overturned and in 2005 she at last gained refugee status.
Yet it is not necessarily a happy ending for someone who first had to endure accusations that she had invented her story, that she was feigning her injuries and that she had duped human rights campaigners into supporting her.
"That is absolutely hurtful to me," she says. "People don't know my background. They don't realise that we asylum seekers are professional people who are not here for £35 a week, to live in poor accommodation provided by NASS get treated like this. What kind of a life is that?
"It did not make me happy to get refugee status, it was like somebody you have begged for food giving you that food but they humiliate you as well. It seems to me that in Western countries, a human being is of less value than oil."
It is a testament to her strength of character that Najla is able to recount her story, in the hope that it will make people understand the genuine plight of people who come here to escape persecution from unlawful police states. "Even now, I would go back to Libya if I could and fight for my country again," she says.
Four years on Najla has managed to rebuild a life for herself in London. But once she had gained refugee status, she was made homeless again when the local authority denied her any help. With the help of the Medical Foundation Najla then found temporary accommodation with the Refugee Housing Association in South London. She has since written for newspapers about the realities of life in Libya - a country with which Britain recently signed a memorandum of understanding allowing for the return of terror suspects from Britain on the assurance that once on Libyan soil, they will not be tortured.
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