Cairo – Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy’s son, who is touted as a reformer, has acknowledged that Bulgarian medical workers jailed for allegedly deliberately infecting children with HIV were tortured in captivity, an apparent attempt to show a more open face to the West.
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 Khadafy.
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 children with the AIDS virus. They have since retracted the confessions and denied infecting the children.
With the admission, the Lib yan leader’s son, Seif al-Islam Khadafy, 36, 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 Khadafy made no apology for the torture in the excerpts. In a report on al-Jazeera’s website Thursday, he boasted of progress in Libya’s human rights situation, saying it was “better than the United States or any Arab country.”
Al-Hazouz accused him 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 as it is. All of us were tortured like animals. We are victims, and we shall never forget it.”
Snezhana Dimitrova, one of the nurses, said she was glad Khadafy’s son had acknowledged the torture.
“The fact that a Libyan, and the son of Khadafy at that, has told the truth is very gratifying, and I thank him for it,” she said.
Libyan officials refused to comment on Seif al-Islam Khadafy’s statements.
The medics were arrested in 1999. 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 European Union struck a deal for millions of dollars in aid to Libya.
