Amenah al-Urfi, a 48-year-old mother of two, is lying in a small room in the public Hawari Hospital in Benghazi, Libya. She is suffering from several different illnesses after spending nearly three months locked in a room inside her home by her husband, who gave her only a some bread and water every day to keep her alive.
Amenah’s family found they couldn’t contact her after she moved to the Qasr al-Akhyar area of western Libya with her husband and two children, and it was her older sister Naima who suspected that her husband was preventing her from contacting her family.
Amenah al-Urfi, a 48-year-old mother of two, is lying in a small room in the public Hawari Hospital in Benghazi, Libya. She is suffering from several different illnesses after spending nearly three months locked in a room inside her home by her husband, who gave her only a some bread and water every day to keep her alive.
Amenah’s family found they couldn’t contact her after she moved to the Qasr al-Akhyar area of western Libya with her husband and two children, and it was her older sister Naima who suspected that her husband was preventing her from contacting her family.
Barely able to breathe
Correspondents visited Amenah in the Hawari Hospital, where she spent ten days before travelling abroad for treatment, and where Amenah’s family told Correspondents about her suffering.
Amenah, groaning with pain on the bed in her room in the internal medicine ward, was barely able to breathe, sit, move, or speak. She could only communicate with visitors by nodding or shaking her head. Her doctor, who requested anonymity, said her condition was serious – she was suffering from “kidney failure, atrophy of the liver, severe anaemia, spinal muscular atrophy, and deep vein thrombosis in the legs because of heart problems.”
He added that the deterioration of her health was partly down to the fact that she had not been taking her heart medication. “All this happened to her because of her husband,” her sister said.
Bread and water
The family did not stop trying to contact Amenah. “Every time we called her, her husband answered and told us she was out,” said Naima. “He used to say that she’s fine.”
But then one of her sisters made a surprise visit, and she was shocked to find her sister locked in a small room inside the house, with only a glass of water and some bread to keep her alive. She was already sick and unable to move.
“We immediately took Amenah to Benghazi after a quarrel with her husband, who kept the two children with him,” said Naima. “The moment we arrived at Hawari Hospital, Amenah was admitted to the intensive care unit.”
Where to complain?
Correspondents asked Naima why she did not file charges against the husband who tortured her sister. “We are in Benghazi and he is in Qasr al-Akhyar,” she answered. “Courts and legal bodies don’t work and there are no security centres. Where can we go? The justice system is still not working.”
Amenah’s sisters asked Correspondents to spread her story in the media and to inform women’s rights organizations. “We can’t do anything against the criminal and unjust husband who tortured our sister and left her to die slowly,” one said.
On top of this, Amenah’s problems will not end with her treatment. Her parents are dead and she has nowhere to go, leaving her family to call on the state to provide her sister and her children with adequate housing.
Legal difficulties
Correspondents described Amenah’s case to a number of official bodies and organizations, including Hind al-Fayidi, head of the human development office at the Ministry of Social Affairs in Benghazi, who confirmed that her office provides assistance to battered women, though she explained that few women come forward. “No one knows about the suffering of these women,” she told Correspondents. “They are either afraid to report their cases or embarrassed because of the prevailing customs and traditions.”
“Amenah’s family should report the case and complain at the nearest police station and then file a lawsuit for the emotional, physical, and financial damage suffered by their daughter,” advised Najwa Ibrahim, a lawyer at the Benghazi court of appeal. “The family should have a medical report and it should support it with eye-witnesses.”
“The judiciary can compensate her for the material and moral losses and for her poor health and psychological condition, caused by her husband,” he said. “But this can only happen if she can prove that her husband was the reason for her suffering.”
The lawyer confirmed that if Amenah can prove the abuse, her husband may be convicted, before adding that “according to the law, Amenah can keep her children with her if they are minors and if she can prove that her husband is not qualified to take care of them.”
As sad as it is, Amenah al-Urfi’s case is only one among many cruel and painful stories told in Libya. But no one dares raise these cases because of the absence of laws and the ineffectiveness of human rights organizations in the country. It has proved very difficult to explore the true extent of domestic violence in Libyan society.
