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LIBYA: Alleged gang-rape victim Eman Obeidy flees to Tunisia

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Eman Obeidy, the Libyan woman who entered the international spotlight after claiming Moammar Kadafi’s militiamen gang raped her in March, apparently fled to Tunisia this week.

Obeidy told CNN that she crossed the border from Tripoli Thursday with the help of a defecting military officer in a military car.

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The car was stopped several times at checkpoints, Obeidy said, but when the officer showed his permit, they were allowed to pass. She entered Tunisia through the Dahibah border crossing using a refugee document, she said.

Obeidy rose to fame after bursting into Tripoli’s Rixos Hotel on March 26 to tell international reporters that she had been held for two days, beaten and raped by 15 men after being seized at a checkpoint east of Tripoli.

She was dragged away from the hotel, and previously told CNN that was she interrogated for three days by men who threw food and poured water on her.

Activists and Facebook pages sprang up in her defense.

She told CNN the trip this week from Tripoli was ‘very tiring.’ European diplomats drove her from the border to Tunis where they were sheltering her Sunday, diplomatic sources told CNN.

In an interview with CNN last month, Obeidy had requested that she be allowed to clear her name, bring her abusers to justice and return to the eastern city of Tobruk to be rejoin her family.

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‘I usually get harassed when I have to show my identification card to government officials somewhere and they find out who I am and that I have put complaints forward against Kadafi’s people,’ she said. ‘They humiliate me to the point where other people gather around and start saying that it is shameful to treat a Libyan woman that way.’

Apparently, she had not been able to return home before fleeing, according to CNN.

-- Molly Hennessy-Fiske in Cairo

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