Horrific Facebook video shows militiamen rape, torture Jordanian woman in Libya's Benghazi

A horrific video showing the torture and rape of a young Jordanian woman by militiamen loyal to warlord Khalifa Haftar in the Libyan city of Benghazi has emerged on social media.

Libyan and other Arab news sites reported that the video had been broadcast live on Facebook showing four men raping and torturing the Jordanian woman, before shaving her head.

Nasser Hawari, the head of Libya’s Victims' Organisation for Human Rights, said that the militiamen had later abandoned the woman in a street in Benghazi.

Deifallah Al-Fayez, a spokesman for the Jordanian Foreign Ministry, quoted the Libyan embassy in Jordan as saying that the young woman was now in a "secure place", adding that "Libyan authorities took the necessary legal and security measures as soon as they received information on the incident".

Al-Fayez also said that "legal procedures" were being taken against the perpetrators of the attack and that the Jordanian Foreign Ministry was in “continued contact with Libyan authorities regarding the details of the case and to provide necessary support and assistance to the Jordanian citizen” who had been attacked.

He added that information regarding the case was only "preliminary".

The "Libyan Feminists" Facebook page said that the abducted woman was in Benghazi to visit her maternal uncles, adding that the militiamen had held her for two days before filming the horrific video.

It shared a brief video clip showing the woman standing quietly as a militiaman shaved her head.

The page, which has nearly 100,000 followers, accused militias loyal to Haftar of targeting women “without any accountability or punishment” and running a sexual slavery network, naming other women targeted by pro-Haftar militiamen.

Rogue General Khalifa Haftar has controlled Benghazi, which is Libya's second largest city, since 2017 along with most of eastern Libya.

In 2020, a peace agreement was signed giving control of all of Libya to a new national unity government but Haftar's militias still operate outside its authority.

The Libyan Feminists page called on the national unity government to "stop ignoring continued violations against women in Libya", saying that the woman was still in Benghazi and they feared for her safety.

On Wednesday, the Libyan national unity government announced that it had freed 37 people, including an unspecified number of Egyptians, who had been held by criminal gangs for six months in Jufra in central Libya.