Mick Hartley

It’s difficult to know what to make of this – whether to admire the man’s honesty, or look for deeper more Machiavellian motives. I suppose that was always the way with Gaddafi.

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s son has said the six Bulgarian medics who were imprisoned for deliberately infecting children with HIV were tortured.
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi told Al Jazeera TV that Libyan investigators tortured the medics with electric shocks and threatened to target their families…

“But a lot of what the Palestinian doctor has claimed are merely lies.”

Dr Ashraf Alhajouj, the Palestinian-born medic, told Dutch TV last month that Libyan authorities had drugged him, given him electric shocks by attaching electrodes to his genitals, and set police dogs on him.

He also said they had tied his arms and legs to a metal bar and spun him repeatedly, like a chicken on a rotisserie.

Mr Gaddafi also confirmed that some of the children had been infected with HIV before the medics arrived in Libya, something which international scientists say they have proven. One case was reported after their arrest.

“There is negligence, there is a disaster that took place, there is a tragedy, but it was not deliberate,” he said.

So….Libya – one assumes Gaddafi’s son has some kind of authorisation from Gaddafi himself to speak out like this – now admits the whole thing was, basically, a crock of shit. Not only does he admit the torture, he even admits in effect that the six accused were known from the start to be innocent. As I wrote earlier, all this can only increase the embarrassment of the British and, especially, French governments who were so eager to make behind-the-scene deals.