Gadhafi's son: Bulgarian medics tortured By PAUL SCHEMM, Associated Press Writer

Gadhafi's son: Bulgarian medics tortured By PAUL SCHEMM, Associated Press Writer
16 minutes ago



CAIRO, Egypt _ - Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's son, who is touted as a reformer, has acknowledged that Bulgarian medical workers jailed for allegedly infecting children with HIV were tortured in captivity, an admission apparently aimed at showing a more open face to the West.

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The release last month of the five nurses and a doctor after nearly nine years in prison boosted Libya's ties with Europe, a key goal of the elder Gadhafi.

But since their release, Dr. Ashraf al-Hazouz, a Palestinian who was granted Bulgarian citizenship, and some of the nurses have spoken frequently in the European media of the torture they underwent to force them to confess to infecting the children with the AIDS virus. They have since retracted the confessions and denied infecting the children.

With the admission, the Libyan leader's son, Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, may have been trying to put the torture issue aside and burnish his own credentials as a candid promoter of change in the long-isolated nation.

"Yes, they (the medics) were tortured by electricity and they were threatened that their family members would be targeted," he said in an interview with the pan-Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera, excerpts of which were aired Wednesday.

The younger Gadhafi made no apology for the torture in the excerpts and even cast doubt on al-Hazouz's specific allegations of mistreatment, saying "a lot of what the Palestinian doctor has claimed are merely lies."

Al-Hazouz accused Gadhafi's son of acting in his own self interest.

"Seif al-Islam always tells only a part of the truth, manipulating the media," the doctor told The Associated Press. "I told the full truth. ... All of us were tortured like animals."

Later Thursday, al-Hazouz repeated many of his allegations of torture to Al-Jazeera, saying the medics were subjected to "electricity, beatings, sleep and food deprivation."

"They threatened to rape me and they threatened to rape one of my sisters," he added.

Snezhana Dimitrova, one of the nurses, said she was glad Gadhafi's son had told the truth.

"The fact that a Libyan and the son of Gadhafi at that has told the truth is very gratifying and I thank him for it," she told the AP.

In a report on the interview on Al-Jazeera's Web site Thursday, he boasted of progress in Libya's human rights situation, saying it was "better than the United States or any Arab country."

Libyan officials refused comment on Seif al-Islam Gadhafi's statements.

The 36-year-old Gadhafi is seen by many as being groomed to succeed his father. He has risen to prominence on a reputation as a reformer, spearheading a program of economic liberalization and often serving as the country's face to the West.

"What he may be trying to do is come clean in a way on some of these issues because he knows that he and his government look foolish denying some of these things," said Ronald Bruce St John, a Libya analyst and author of six books on the country.

The admission could also boost Seif al-Islam Gadhafi's image as a link between Libya and Europe.

"He is perceived to be a modernizer and that's largely in the eye of the beholder, but the Western governments seem to be anxious to use him as the fixer in these situations," said Henry Shuyler, a former diplomat and executive for a U.S. oil company who spent 30 years working in Libya.

Shuyler cautioned, however, that it is not at all clear inside the murky world of Libya's internal politics how strong the younger Gadhafi's position really is.

"We don't know to what extent that reflects the thinking in the regime or of his father," he said. "No one knows what succession is going to bring."

Libya's decades-long status as a pariah to the West changed abruptly in 2003 when U.N. sanctions imposed 11 years earlier were lifted after Gadhafi announced he was dismantling his nuclear weapons program.

That same year, Libya accepted responsibility for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and agreed to pay restitution to the families of the 270 victims.

The case of the six medics, however, became a new obstacle in Libya's ties in the West. They were arrested in 1999 on charges of deliberately infecting more than 400 Libyan children with HIV, 50 of whom died, in a Benghazi hospital. They were twice sentenced to death despite testimony from AIDS experts that the children were infected by unhygienic conditions at the hospital.

The medics were released after Libya and the EU struck a deal for millions of dollars in aid to Libya, and soon afterward France signed an arms deal with Tripoli.

Officials close to Gadhafi's son have expressed doubts in the past over the medics' guilt and said they may have been tortured. But public outrage over the infections was high and the elder Gadhafi said repeatedly he would not intervene in the court proceedings.

St John said it was likely the younger Gadhafi's remarks had official sanction.

"I think Seif is out front in the reformist wing but he is savvy enough not to get too far out in front," he said. "In many cases, part of the apparent process here is to put Seif above and outside the government as a kind of progressive leader."

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Associated Press writer Vladimir Zhelyazkov in Sofia, Bulgaria, contributed to this report.