Various news organizations have reported that a CIA officer stationed in Algeria, identified by CBS News as Andrew Warren, has been accused of drugging and raping two Algerian women. The women, according to CBS, came forward separately and “reported the incidents months after they occurred.” This from ABC News:
The CIA’s station chief at its sensitive post in Algeria is under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department for allegedly raping at least two Muslim women who claim he laced their drinks with a knock-out drug, U.S. law enforcement sources tell ABC News.
Of the incident ABC also reports:
The alleged victim said she remembers being in Warren’s bed and asking him to stop, but that “Warren made a statement to the effect of ‘nobody stays in my expensive sheets with clothes on.’” She told investigators “as she slipped in and out of consciousness she had conscious images of Warren penetrating her vagina repeatedly with his penis.”
The second victim told investigators she sent Warren a text message accusing him of abusing her and he replied, “I am sorry,” the affidavit says.
According to the affidavit, when Warren was interviewed by Diplomatic Security investigators, he claimed he had “engaged in consensual sexual intercourse” and admitted there were photographs of the two women on his personal laptop. He would not consent to a search or seizure of the computer, leading investigators to seek the warrant.
According to the affidavit, a search of Warren’s residence in Algiers turned up Valium and Xanax and a handbook on the investigation of sexual assaults.
The affidavit says toxicologists at the FBI laboratory say Xanax and Valium are among the drugs “commonly used to facilitate sexual assault.”
But these women may not be the only victims. Investigators found video tapes of the rapes, or videos in which “Warren engaged in sexual acts” and among them they found videos from Cairo. Warren has since been recalled to the U.S.
A few reports have also mentioned how Warren is a convert to Islam. This may be in an attempt to ease the blow. As it is, the incident has very colonial undertones to it, hinting to the days when colonizing men viewed the women they were colonizing as bodies to which they had access. (Though I could easily argue that is occurring today as well in other parts of the world). Even though Warren is not a white American, which would have added the extra dimension of white superiority of the American imperial colonizer, the power an American CIA agent has in many parts of the world can easily be abused to demonstrate patriarchal power and exploitation. Telling us that he is a convert to Islam may make him seem less colonizing and more “one of them”, allowing American media to distance America from him. It’s as if they are saying “He’s not one of us. He’s really one of your own. This cannot be a demonstration of our imperialism when it was one of your own (sort) who did this.”
http://muslimahmediawatch.org/2009/02/10/the-cia-and-rape-media-representations-of-the-victims/
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
