A Libyan woman who burst into the Tripoli hotel where international journalists are based and claimed she had been gang-raped by Moammar Gadhafi's forces has escaped to Tunisia, according to a report Monday.
Iman al-Obeidi's arrival at the hotel in March set off a brawl as journalists tried unsuccessfully to stop government minders and hotel staff from taking her away.
A Libyan government spokesman later said she was drunk and seemed to have mental problems, but subsequently retreated from that claim.
that military officers, who were defecting from the regime, had helped her escape across the border to Tunisia. She wore a traditional garment that enabled her to hide all of her face apart from one eye.
She told the broadcaster that the car was stopped at several points along a mountain road they used to get to the Dahibah border crossing, but that the officers were able to pass through using their identity cards.
'A little hard'"It was a little hard, there were checkpoints and the brigades (military)," she told CNN.
"I still do not know what I am going to do. Of course, I'd like to see my family," she said.
CNN reported that she was taken to the French Embassy in Tunis and that French President Nicolas Sarkozy was taking a personal interest in her situation.
Al-Obeidi added that she had called relatives in Egypt but had not heard back from them.
Her father, Atiq al-Obeidi, told CNN that he had feared Gadhafi's forces would "do the worst to her, given his past."
"I am extremely delighted, and I will be looking forward to more information about how she was able to escape," he told CNN from rebel-held Tobruk.
On Tuesday last week, a United Nations team investigating human rights violations, led by Egyptian-born war crimes expert Cherif Bassiouni, asked the Libyan authorities about al-Obeidi's case and requested that she be allowed to leave Libya.