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Huda Ben Amer

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Huda Ben Amer is a Libyan politician. A follower of the Libyan ruler, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, she is currently the Secretary of the General People's Congress of Inspection People's Control[1] and was mayor of Benghazi until the 2011 Libyan uprising.[2]

Ben Amer was born in Al Marg near Benghazi and attended the Garyounis University in Benghazi.[2] Belonging to a poor family without influence, Ben Amer rose to national prominence at a public execution staged by the Gaddafi government in 1984. The event in Benghazi's basketball stadium had been announced as the trial of one of Gaddaffi's political enemies, Al-Sadek Hamed Al-Shuwehdy, an engineer who had been peacefully campaigning against the Colonel's rule. But instead the schoolchildren and students who had been assembled for the purpose were made to see Al-Shuwehdy's execution by hanging. While the hanged man writhed on the gallows, Ben Amer stepped forward and grabbed Al-Shuwehdy's legs, pulling him down until he stopped struggling and died.[2]

That display of ruthlessness, about which she later liked to boast - she is remembered in Benghazi by her saying "we don't need talking, we need hangings" – earned her the enduring loathing of the people of Benghazi and the nickname Huda Al-Shannaga – Huda the executioner.[2][3] However, it impressed Gaddafi, who had been watching the execution on live TV. He subsequently promoted Ben Amer to high government posts, including twice mayor of Benghazi and a leading member of the Legan Thwria, Gaddaffi's organization of revolutionary committees. Eventually she became a favorite of Gaddaffi, and one of the richest and most powerful women in Libya.[2]

In the course of the national uprising in early 2011, a crowd stormed Ben Amer's sprawling mansion in Benghazi and, finding her gone, burned it to the ground.[3] Later in March 2011, she was seen next to Gaddaffi on one of his televised addresses.[2]

References

  1. ^ Secretariat of the General People's Congress Holds First Meeting After Reshuffle The Tripoli Post 6 February 2010
  2. ^ a b c d e f Meo, Nick (6 March 2011). "'Huda the executioner' - Libya's devil in female form". The Telegraph. Retrieved 12 March 2011.
  3. ^ a b McGreal, Chris (12 March 2011). "Libya: Benghazi's rebels know it is now them or Gaddafi". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 March 2011.