The week at a glance...International

Tripoli, Libya

Hundreds raped: Muammar al-Qaddafi’s forces have raped hundreds of women during their crackdown on anti-regime protesters. On a questionnaire distributed to thousands of families in refugee camps, more than 250 women said they had been raped, some of them in front of their husbands or children. Experts say the number is certainly vastly higher because most Libyan women will not admit to having been raped. In Libya, rape is seen as a stain on the family’s honor, and victims are often abandoned or killed. “They are using rape not just to hurt women but to terrorize entire families and communities,” said Seham Sergewa, the psychologist who did the study.

Cairo

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

‘Virginity checks’: Egyptian activists are calling on the interim military government to investigate soldiers who abused female demonstrators during the uprising that ousted former leader Hosni Mubarak. At least 17 women who were detained during demonstrations in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in March have said they were subjected to invasive “virginity checks” to make sure they had intact hymens. The army initially denied the allegation, but this week an Egyptian general told CNN it was true. “We didn’t want them to say we had sexually assaulted or raped them, so we wanted to prove that they weren’t virgins in the first place,” said the Egyptian general, who requested anonymity. “The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine,” he said. “These were girls who had camped out in tents with male protesters.”

Daraa, Syria

Child tortured to death: The death, apparently by torture, of a Syrian boy horrified Syrians this week and galvanized the country’s anti-regime demonstrators. Hamza al-Khateeb, 13, was detained at a protest in late April, and his family said they knew nothing of his treatment until they received his mutilated corpse last week. Hamza’s swollen body was riddled with bullet wounds, electric-shock burns, cigarette burns, and whip marks. His neck was broken and his penis cut off. Syrian authorities say that Hamza was killed in crossfire at a demonstration and that there were no marks on his body when it was delivered to the family. After video of the body was released on YouTube and Al-Jazeera last week, Hamza’s father, brother, and uncle were arrested.

Tehran

Impeaching Ahmadinejad? In the latest blow to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s authority, Iran’s parliament this week voted to take him to court for violating the constitution by appointing himself oil minister. The president ran afoul of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in April, when he was overruled after trying to fire the intelligence minister, forcing a humiliating reversal. Then last month, he fired the oil minister and named himself to the post, an action deemed illegal by the Guardian Council, Iran’s constitutional watchdog body. Some lawmakers have even accused the president of trying to enrich himself by taking over the lucrative oil industry. It’s unclear whether this week’s vote is intended simply as a warning to the president or whether he could actually be put on trial.

Pyongyang, North Korea

American freed: North Korea has freed a 60-year-old American missionary after holding him in jail for seven months. Eddie Yong Su Jun, a Korean-American businessman and missionary from California, had a visa to enter North Korea but was arrested there last November and accused of attempting to spread Christianity. After many appeals for his release, including by former President Jimmy Carter, authorities sent him home this week. “The investigation proved that Jun committed a serious crime,” the North Korean regime said in a statement. It did not identify the crime.

Moscow

Setback for Khodorkovsky: The European Court of Human Rights ruled this week that imprisoned Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky had not proved that his arrest was politically motivated. Khodorkovsky has long maintained that his 2003 arrest on embezzlement charges was revenge for his financing opponents of Vladimir Putin, who was then president. The court said that while the case did “raise a certain suspicion,” there was insufficient proof to rule Khodorkovsky a political prisoner. Still, it did find that he had been held under “inhuman and degrading” conditions. Russian Justice Minister Alexander Konovalov said the ruling should end the “groundless claims regarding Russia’s legal system.” Khodorkovsky, who had been accused of stealing more oil than his company even produced, was kept in a cage in the courtroom during his original trial.