Gadhafi's son: Bulgarian medics tortured

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Gadhafi's son: Bulgarian medics tortured

13 minutes ago

TRIPOLI, Libya - The son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi
has acknowledged that the Bulgarian medical workers who were
jailed on charges of infecting children with HIV were tortured
during captivity, Al-Jazeera TV said on its Web site Thursday.

The doctor and five nurses were released last month and have
maintained that their confessions were extracted through torture.

"Yes, they were tortured by electricity and they were threatened
that their family members would be targeted," Seif al-Islam
Gadhafi was quoted as saying by the Arab broadcaster.

-snip-

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070809/ap_on_re_mi_ea/libya_bulgarian_medics

---

Source: Al Jazeera

Libya acknowledges medics' torture

Five foreign medics and a Palestinian medical doctor had been
tortured while in detention, a son of Libyan leader Muammar
Gaddafi has told Al Jazeera.

Saif al-Islam, however, denied that his country would face legal
action for that.

In an interview on Wednesday, Saif al-Islam said: "Yes, they
were tortured by electricity and they were threatened that their
family members would be targeted. But a lot of what the
Palestinian doctor has claimed are merely lies."

-snip-

Ashraf Alhajouj, the doctor, plans to file a complaint against
Libya before a UN human rights panel, his lawyer said on Tuesday.

-snip-

Read more: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/71C92F03-1444-49C4-AB9E-70D195B6A659.htm

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. I am dumbfounded

torture has become so commonplace that governments are admitting to it like it is nothing!

[Mist]

3. It's a new Dark Age, I think. nt

[Swede]

2. They had to blame someone,these nurses where the scapegoats.

9 years of their lives imprisoned in a foreign country,plus torture.

[ohio2007]

4. they were captured in 1999 and tortured for eight years

why is this breaking news now?

[Laughing Mirror]

5. Because they were finally released and their torturers finally confessed

This is news.

[ohio2007]

6. Should make you wonder how many are still being held and tortured eh?

the little people with no clout,no French connections ect.
I'm not talking about the ones with womens panties on the heads but the ones in some rwal world shitholes

[Laughing Mirror]

9. You mean you are not talking about the people the US tortures

Only the ones Libya does.

[ohio2007]

14. Throw in the Russian and north Korean Gulags and we'll call it a hat trick

Libya doesn't have a monopoly on torture and I wouldn't pretend it doesn't exist anywhere else in the world.

[barb162]

7. It's been in the news over the years.

The torture aspect is new info.

[maxsolomon]

8. and european governments paid millions & millions to free them

libya is not cool.

[aquart]

10. Nonsense. They're our new best friends.

Completely rehabilitated. Nothing like the Axis of Evil. Great pals. Was it Bush who told us so?

[liberalnurse]

11. If these workers were infecting children

with HIV, well then......I'm absolutely fine with them getting tortured! I like that much better than execution.

[SpikeTss]

12. Wait until the first abducted US businessmen will be tortured in libyan prisons

If people then find it still cool that Libya is torturing and threatening to kill innocents.
Gadhafi's son openly said that the accusations against the nurses were completely fabricated.
They were tortured, because the Libyans wanted to press money from the West and they succeeded.

Libya is such a great state!

[SpikeTss]

13. Gaddafi admits Bulgarian nurses were tortured

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/09/wlibya109.xml

The Gaddafi regime in Libya has admitted torturing confessions from five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of infecting Libyan children with HIV.

Seif al-Islam Gaddafi, the Muammar Gaddafi's son, said the medics, who were freed last month after an eight year ordeal, were subjected to electric shocks.

...

Experts insisted that poor hygiene, not conspiracy to murder, was behind the infections and that Libyan authorities were looking for scapegoats.

"It's like a return to the Middle Ages, with scapegoats who are served up for the public," Luc Montagnier, who co-discovered HIV in 1983, said last year.

Such was the ordeal that one of the six, Nasya Nenova, attempted suicide in prison.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/29/wnurses129.xml

Libya HIV doctor tells of eight-year hell

Speaking from the Bulgarian presidential residence in Sofia, where he and the nurses are currently staying, Dr al-Hazouz said: "The past eight years have been one big nightmare. We were tortured during the police investigation for over 10 months. We were held in a remote place outside of Tripoli, in a desolate area where no one could hear you scream. It was hell we went through.

...

"I was kept in a cell with three police dogs and the officers would make them bite me repeatedly. I still have scars from the bites. We were beaten severely and subjected to deprivation of sleep."

Dr al-Hazouz said they lived for years in fear that they had been infected with HIV, although they have now been given the all-clear. "But the worst thing for me was when they threatened to bring one of my sisters and rape her in front of me. At that point I agreed to sign anything and confess to anything, just to stop that nightmare," he said.