'Gaddafi's police savaged my son to force a confession'

[T_i_B]

So these are the people Tony Blair is getting into bed with!

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/story.jsp?story=519410

A Palestinian doctor in Libya who was sentenced this week to die by firing squad for deliberately infecting hundreds of babies with Aids was so badly tortured by Libyan police that his father could no longer recognise him, The Independent on Sunday has learnt.

Yesterday, speaking to the press for the first time, Dr Hasan's father, Ahmad Hasan, told the IoS that the accused were innocent victims of a clumsy plot by the Libyan authorities to cover up squalid conditions of hygiene at the state-run hospital.

And to force Dr Hasan to make a confession, he said, police subjected him to unspeakable torture over a period of 10 months. To try and force Dr Hasan to admit to being a Mossad agent, he was strapped to a metal bed frame with electric wires attached to his fingers, toes, nipples and genitals, and given electric shocks for hours. He was beaten on the head and groin with electric batons, sodomised with a broom handle until he bled, and repeatedly knocked unconscious with drugs. He was taken outside and dragged around a field by wire attached to his genitals. He was hung upside down until he blacked out, and suspended by his hands for long periods until his shoulder was dislocated. Cigarettes were repeatedly stubbed out on his skin, and he still bears the burn marks. He was punched in the face with such violence that he lost three front teeth.

No evidence was offered by the prosecution to support the case against the medical workers. The defence called eminent Aids experts, including Dr Luc Montagnier, the man who first identified the HIV virus, who told the court that the epidemic was probably caused by poor hygiene in the hospital: needles, for example, were not sterilised but merely washed under a tap. He also pointed out that the epidemic started before the foreigners arrived, and continued after they were arrested.

[maddezmom]

1. sounds like a page out of the torture manual at Abu Ghraib n/t

<< he was strapped to a metal bed frame with electric wires attached to his fingers, toes, nipples and genitals, and given electric shocks for hours. He was beaten on the head and groin with electric batons, sodomised with a broom handle until he bled, and repeatedly knocked unconscious with drugs. He was taken outside and dragged around a field by wire attached to his genitals. He was hung upside down until he blacked out, and suspended by his hands for long periods until his shoulder was dislocated. Cigarettes were repeatedly stubbed out on his skin, and he still bears the burn marks. He was punched in the face with such violence that he lost three front teeth.>>

[daleo]

4. One of the elementary practical problems with getting in the torture biz

Once the U.S. (and U.K., perhaps other western members of the coalition) have established a reputation for torture, it becomes quite difficult to point the finger at others, even when they richly deserve to be condemned. A leader of even minimal intelligence would have understood this, unfortunately Bush and his cadres do not belong in this category.

[0007]

2. junior sez Gaddafi is a good man that wants to come clean

and become like the U.S. - cough cough

"Colonel Gaddafi's rehabilitation in Brussels, was greeted with consternation in Europe. The European Commission said it was "deeply disappointed". In London, a Foreign Office spokesman said yesterday: "We are appalled by the harshness of these sentences and are raising urgently our concerns with the Libyans at a senior level."

But Colonel Gaddafi has frequently demonstrated a disregard bordering on contempt for foreign opinion - an attitude repeatedly rewarded by international organisations.

Until now Ahmed Hasan has said nothing about his son's case, fearing to prejudice the result. But now he feels he has nothing to lose. "This is how Libya pays me and my wife for teaching in their schools for 33 years," he said yesterday. "My son and my family have been completely destroyed by this case. Who is responsible? The Libyan people, or Colonel Gaddafi himself? Who is the criminal?"

Duh! junior's new buddy? Blair is also proud of Gaddafi for during a 180.

[Crunchy Frog]

3. Well, I guess we really managed to

get Gaddafi under control and turn him into a nice cooperative puppy dog by invading Iraq. At least that's the line we're being fed. I wonder how they will fit this latest business into that narrative.