Proof of the need of a militant Women's Movement

Last summer, an Iraqi woman named Dalal, imprisoned to (reportedly) compel her brother to come in for questioning, was raped and impregnated by prison guards, then killed by her brother for it.

As today's LA Times reports, Dalal wrote her brother, asking for help after being raped by the guards, who apparently let her brother visit without questioning him in order to allow him to kill her and save them from getting in trouble. It worked, sort of.

The case might have ended there were it not for the morgue employee, who was determined to see those responsible held to account.

At the employee's insistence, lab workers using freshly acquired DNA-testing equipment drew a sample from the fetus. The prison guards were ordered to submit DNA samples and did so, apparently unaware of the sophistication of the morgue equipment and the people trained to use it.

"They thought we were incapable of figuring it out," said the morgue employee.

The DNA results showed that the father of the unborn baby was a police lieutenant colonel who reportedly supervised guards at the prison.

Of course, in America the guards would have been guilty of rape even if the sex had been "consensual" because our laws delineate that prisoners cannot consent — and, if I recall correctly, we sort of wrote Iraqi laws after we took over the country. But, naturally, that isn't how it worked out for either the brother or the prison guards.

Yet other accounts say the matter was settled through tribal justice. The clan of the accused lieutenant colonel paid the woman's family to drop charges, said some people in the area who are familiar with the case but fearful of discussing it openly.

via Jezebel and LA Times