Libyan LGBT Activist Hopes to Leave Benghazi

A Libyan LGBT rights activist who asked the Washington Blade not to publish his name was driving in the city of Benghazi in 2014 when three Islamic militants stopped his car. The men had Kalashnikovs, and one of them tried to open the door to his car. The men shot at him as he drove away. “Thank God (they) didn’t do anything to me,” the activist told the Blade on Saturday during a telephone interview from Tunisia where he was attending a human rights conference. Benghazi, which is on the Mediterranean Sea, is Libya’s second largest city. It is located slightly more than 400 miles east of the country’s capital of Tripoli.

May 10 / Washington Blade