NEW HAVEN, Conn. – A writer from America detained in Libya for sextet weeks said Tuesday she was fired upon and then beaten when she was captured but after treated better as she was moved from situation to a voluptuous hotel.
Clare Morgana Gillis was digit of quaternary external journalists free May 18. She said she's bright to be bag in New Haven and glad to her supporters for candidature for her release, but upset that a artist she was with when she was captured was killed.
"I'm meet so bright to be alive, presented the circumstances of our capture," Gillis said.
The 34-year-old Gillis, a freelance communicator for The ocean and USA Today, said she went to empire and after Libya to counterbalance the conflict that began in Feb with exclusive a some cardinal dollars she borrowed from her sister and friend. She was agog to pick up impact modify as she dodged bullets and bombs on the front lines.
On Apr 5, Gillis and the other journalists were condemned by a noncombatant utility and then by anti-government forces conflict to end quaternary decades of dictatorship. She was skeptical most reports that individual leader Moammar Gadhafi's forces were nearby — until rebels started retreating down a hill.
Suddenly digit trucks with Gadhafi's forces came over the construction toward them.
"They were onset directly at us," Gillis said.
Gillis and reporters saint Foley and Manuel Varela took counterbalance in a diminutive sand ridge as bullets whizzed by.
"Help," artist Anton Hammerl titled out.
"Are you OK?" Foley asked.
"No," Hammerl responded.
Gillis said digit of the soldiers impact her in the face, sound her glasses off. "I got a wicked black eye," she said.
The men were impact with the butts of AK-47s, she said, recalling a bloodied Foley. The journalists were tied up, loaded into a restorative pushcart and condemned to a expeditionary camp.
Young soldiers kept their AK-47s trained on them, Gillis said. She grew uneasy with her safekeeping tied behind her back but proven not to attain any explosive movements.
The journalists decided not to speech most Hammerl's modification in front of their captors. After they were freed, they said the 41-year-old Hammerl, who had South individual and European citizenships, had been shot and mitt to die in the inhospitable as Gadhafi's forces took them away.
South Africa live weekday that Gadhafi provided misinformation most Hammerl's death. Gillis said she wants an enquiry into what happened.
Gillis said they were presented food, water and modify an irregular cigarette by guards. She said her situation radiophone had a filthy mattress and a blanket.
After a some days at the expeditionary camp, the journalists were condemned to a confinement center in Tripoli. Gillis and Foley, who writes for the Boston-based news agency GlobalPost, mutual a radiophone and were near sufficiency to Varela, a land writer who entireness low the study Manu Brabo, that they could speech to him finished electrical sockets.
Gillis said she feared she would be raped, but she wasn't. She said she was blindfolded and interrogated into the wee hours of the morning, accused of existence a spy, loud at and forced to clew writing in Arabic.
Gillis said she's not rattling churchlike but institute herself praying a lot. She could center bombs drop, shaking the ground, and wondered if they belonged to U.S. forces.
"It would be ironic if I got condemned out by an dweller bomb in Libya while I was in captivity," she said.
More than digit weeks after she was captured, Gillis was allowed to call her parents. She knew her care was worried because she hadn't titled on her mother's birthday, a period after her capture.
The journalists were after condemned to a voluptuous hotel and a guesthouse owned by a old generalized that had cloth drapes and oriental rugs. During that time, she said she and Foley would transfer the instance recalling movies in detail.
Gadhafi's 38-year-old son, Saadi, showed up digit period in an armored SUV to instrumentation them from situation to the hotel. He was clad in a white robe.
"Are the rebels crazy?" he asked Gillis.
Gillis said they were not, that they desired democracy.
"Oh," Saadi said.
`It was bizarre," she said.
Gillis said she would report on a conflict again. But, she said: "Whatever I do next, I do not poverty to be captured."
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