Sunderland, on England’s north-east coast, is an unlikely refuge for a Libyan activist forced to flee the very revolution she helped bring about.Twenty-five-year-old Magdulien Abaida, who was involved in organising aid for the rebels fighting Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, has just been given asylum here by the UK government.Now the city on the edge of the North Sea, where she knows no-one, has become her temporary home.The irony of her situation is clear: “It’s very bad that you put yourself in danger to work hard for this revolution,” she says. “And then in the end you have to leave it because it’s not a safe place for you anymore.”Mustafa Abdel Jalil Mustafa Abdel Jalil caused dismay in some quarters when he proposed making polygamy easier“During the revolution everyone was united, all were working together, but now it’s quite difficult,” she says.Ms Abaida, the daughter of a lawyer, grew up on the shores of the Mediterranean in Libya’s capital, Tripoli.When the uprising against Gaddafi’s 41-year dictatorship broke out in February 2011 she travelled first to Cairo and then to Paris to campaign against the regime and help organise food and medical supplies for the rebels.After Tripoli fell to the rebels in August, she returned to Libya to campaign for women’s rights - in particular for equality in the yet to be written constitution. This is a problem that we are facing, we are not shying from it, we are not denying it, we know we have a big problem, and we have the will to put an end to that”Some were horrified, for example, when in October 2011 Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the internationally-known face of the revolution and head of the rebels’ National Transitional Council (NTC), used his first public speech after the fall of Gaddafi to propose making it easier for men to have more than one wife.“It was a big shock for us. This is not why we made the revolution - not for men to marry four women,” Ms Abaida says. “We wanted more rights, not to destroy the rights of half of the society.”This summer on a visit to Libya’s second city, Benghazi, the headquarters of last year’s uprising, Ms Abaida was detained twice by members of a powerful independent militia which formed to fight Gaddafi, but which has since failed to disband.Some of these militias, including the one which seized Ms Abaida, have a strong Islamist orientation.The women’s conference which Ms Abaida was attending - financed in part by British aid money - was interrupted by armed men. Later, militia members seized her from her hotel room. She was released, but abducted again the next day and held prisoner in a room at the militia base.
