Tobruk, Libya (CNN) -- Like everyone else, Aisha Ahmad watched the riveting drama unfold in a Tripoli hotel as a desperate woman burst into a dining room filled with journalists, sobbing, screaming, wanting the world to know she had been raped by 15 of Moammar Gadhafi's militia men. The arresting images of how swiftly the woman, Eman al-Obeidy, 29, and the journalists were stifled stirred viewers around the world. But perhaps none more so than Ahmad. This was her daughter. And she was enraged. Just weeks before, Ahmad might have wept in silence. But now, with war engulfing Libya and its future hanging in the balance, Ahmad feared Gadhafi no more. "If I were to see his face, I would strangle him," she told CNN in an interview at her modest home in the eastern coastal city of Tobruk. No one would do that unless they were raped, and especially in a conservative society. --Mona Eltahawy, columnist on Arab and Muslim issues. RELATED TOPICS Eman al-Obeidy