The Palestinian
doctor who was freed from a Libyan jail this week along
with five Bulgarian nurses said his captors tortured him by
tying his hands and legs to a metal bar and spinning
him like a chicken on a rotisserie.
In an interview
broadcast Friday on Dutch television, Ashraf al-Hazouz
also said Libyan authorities drugged him, shocked him by
attaching electrodes to his feet and genitals, and set
dogs on him.
''They asked me
how many days it had been since I had eaten. I said four
days--I thought they were being compassionate,'' said
al-Hazouz, 39. ''They said, 'Roasted chicken,''' he
said.
Then they tied
his arms and legs to a bar and spun him repeatedly, like a
chicken on a rotisserie.
Al-Hazouz,
speaking in Arabic on public TV's Ein Vandaag
program, with his words translated into Dutch subtitles,
said he was forced to sign a statement that he had
been well-treated.
He and the nurses
were accused in 1999 of deliberately infecting more
than 400 Libyan children with HIV, 50 of whom later died.
The medical workers were sentenced to death based on
their confessions but were released into Bulgarian
custody on Tuesday after the sentences were commuted
to life imprisonment. They were immediately granted a
presidential pardon in Bulgaria and freed.
The Dutch
government has said it expects al-Hazouz, after recuperating
in Bulgaria where has been granted citizenship, will
move to the Netherlands, where his father and four
sisters were given political asylum in 2005.
Al-Hazouz said
the prisoners moved cells frequently at the beginning. One
cell was so hot, ''I peeled the skin from my forehead like
this,'' he said, moving his fingers over his brow. The
cell was ''like a sauna because of our breath. There
was no ventilation.''
He said he was
attacked by dogs three times.
In the end, he
said, ''I gave the answers they wanted.''
Libyan
authorities in Tripoli were unavailable to comment on his
allegations.
In 2005 the six
medics filed lawsuits against 10 Libyan officers alleging
torture, but the charges were rejected by a Libyan court.
The day the
medical workers were released, the director of a fund
created to compensate families of infected children
expressed disappointment over the court ruling.
''We believe that
acquitting the Libyan officers on charges of torture
was incorrect, but this is a court decision and we respect
the Libyan judiciary,'' said Saleh Abdul-Salam,
director of the Gadhafi International Foundation for
Charity Associations, which manages the fund headed by
Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's son, Seif al Islam.
Al-Hazouz and two
of the nurses, Nasya Nenova and Kristiana Valcheva,
have said they were ready to testify in a Bulgarian
investigation launched in January about their torture
allegations.
Bulgarian
prosecutor Nikolai Kokinov said the Libyan officers were
suspected of using coercion, torture, and threats between
February and May 1999 to extract false confessions
from the six. (AP)