Clare Morgana Gillis | |
---|---|
Nationality | American |
Occupation | Journalist |
Known for | Held hostage in Libya (April 5 – May 18, 2011) |
Clare Morgana Gillis is an American journalist. [1] On April 5, 2011, Gillis was traveling with an anti-Gaddafi militia force, with fellow journalists James Foley, Manu Brabo and Anton Hammerl, during the collapse of the Muammar Gaddafi regime, when they were attacked by a rival group. [2] [3] [4] [5] Hammerl died during the initial attack. Gillis, Foley and Brabo were held as hostages.
Gillis graduated from Hopkins School in New Haven, Connecticut in 1994, and afterwards attended the University of Chicago where she received her B.A. in English Language and Literature. She also attended the University of Iceland as a Fulbright Scholar. [6] Gillis had delivered the Doctoral dissertation in medieval history that earned her her PhD from Harvard University a year before her capture. [7] [8]
Gillis was dragged by her hair, and beaten, by the fighters who captured her on April 5, 2011. [9]
The rump of the Libyan government gave Gillis and her colleagues a one-year suspended sentence when it released them on Wednesday May 18, 2011 six weeks after their capture. [10]
Gillis appeared before the United States Senate's Judiciary Committee on July 28, 2011, when it was considering a bill on improving US compliance with its obligations to provide consular access to foreigners the US government arrests. [11] She told the Senators that her own safe release had relied on her access to Hungarian diplomats.
In an interview with WNYC Gillis compared the level of violence she saw in Libya with the violence one sees from those raised in families that experienced domestic violence. [8]
The murder of Yvonne Fletcher, a Metropolitan Police officer, occurred on 17 April 1984, when she was fatally wounded by a shot fired from the Libyan embassy on St James's Square, London, by an unknown gunman. Fletcher had been deployed to monitor a demonstration against the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, and died shortly afterwards. Her death resulted in an eleven-day siege of the embassy, at the end of which those inside were expelled from the country and the United Kingdom severed diplomatic relations with Libya.
Saif al-Islam Muammar al-Gaddafi is a Libyan political figure. He is the second son of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi and his second wife Safia Farkash. He was a part of his father's inner circle, performing public relations and diplomatic roles on his behalf. He publicly turned down his father's offer of the country's second highest post and held no official government position. According to United States Department of State officials in Tripoli, during his father's reign, he was the second most widely recognized person in Libya, being at times the de facto prime minister, and was mentioned as a possible successor, though he rejected this. An arrest warrant was issued for him on 27 June 2011 by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for charges of crimes against humanity against the Libyan people, for killing and persecuting civilians, under Articles 7(1)(a) and 7(1)(h) of the Rome statute. He denied the charges.
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Anton Hammerl was a South African photojournalist who was shot and killed by troops loyal to Muammar Gaddafi outside of Brega while covering the First Libyan Civil War on 5 April 2011. After his death, Hammerl's family was led to believe by the Gaddafi regime that he was alive and safe, but held in detention in Libya. His family learned about his death on 19 May after the release of a group of journalists who had been with Hammerl when he was killed.
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James Wright Foley was an American journalist and video reporter. While working as a freelance war correspondent during the Syrian Civil War, he was abducted on November 22, 2012, in northwestern Syria. He was murdered by decapitation in August 2014 purportedly as a response to American airstrikes in Iraq, thus becoming the first American citizen executed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Manu Brabo is a Spanish photojournalist who was captured in Libya along with three other journalists while covering the Libyan Civil War in 2011 and who was part of the Associated Press team to win the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography in 2013.
GlobalPost, an online news publication, said that the three other journalists were Clare Morgana Gillis, an American freelancer who has reported for The Atlantic, and two photographers, Manu Brabo of Spain and Anton Hammerl of South Africa.
Before the day was over, it would be exceptional in another way entirely—brutal, heartbreaking—as our initial success made us forget the cardinal rule of war reportage: don't die.
Gillis has recounted her harrowing tale of capture, imprisonment, and release in the latest issue of The Atlantic magazine. She reflects on her experience and shares her insight into what the future has in store for Libya.
She explained that without the help of the Hungarian consulate in Libya, who facilitated her release, she may not have gotten out safely. 'Consular access is vital to people in our situation,' she said.