Gaddafi admits Bulgarian nurses were tortured

The Gaddafi regime in Libya has admitted torturing confessions from five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of infecting Libyan children with HIV.

Seif al-Islam Gaddafi, the Muammar Gaddafi's son, said the medics, who were freed last month after an eight year ordeal, were subjected to electric shocks.

State officials also made threats against the detainees families, he said.

Col Gaddafi's son was responding to claims by the doctor, Ashraf al-Hazouz, that Libyan authorities used drugs and attached electrodes to his feet and genitals in a bid to extract a confession.

He added the authorities set dogs on the prisoners, tied him to a bar and spun him repeatedly, like a chicken on a rotisserie.

Seif al-Islam Gaddafi denied the most extreme of the doctor's allegations. "A lot of what the Palestinian doctor has claimed are merely lies," he told the al-Jazeera television channel.

The Libyan authorities have refused to comment on the interview.

The medics - known as the "Benghazi six" because they worked at a hospital in the Mediterranean town of Benghazi - were arrested in 1999 accused of infecting more than 400 children with HIV.

Five years later, with dubious confessions and despite the testimony in their favour of leading HIV experts, they were convicted and sentenced to death.

Experts insisted that poor hygiene, not conspiracy to murder, was behind the infections and that Libyan authorities were looking for scapegoats.

"It's like a return to the Middle Ages, with scapegoats who are served up for the public," Luc Montagnier, who co-discovered HIV in 1983, said last year.

Such was the ordeal that one of the six, Nasya Nenova, attempted suicide in prison.

The medics were freed under a deal between the European Union and Libyan government last month.

Meanwhile, some 56 of the children, who were infected through tainted blood transfusions, have died.

TIMELINE OF MEDICS' ORDEAL

Feb 1999: Libyan authorities detain 23 Bulgarian medics, nurses and doctors in the port city of Benghazi.

June 2001: Two of the nurses, on whose confessions prosecutors based the charges, testify that their statements were extracted by torture. All six plead not guilty.

Dec 2005: Libya's Supreme Court orders a retrial after the original conviction sentencing the six to death by firing squad is overturned on appeal.

Dec 2006: After a second trial the six are found guilty and sentenced to death. Prosecutors alleged they intentionally infected more than 400 Libyan children with HIV as part of an experiment to find a cure for AIDS.

July 17, 2007: The Supreme Court upholds the death sentences but it is commuted to life in prison after the families drop their demand for the prisoners to be executed.

July 22, 2007: European Union commissioner for foreign affairs, Benita Ferrero-Waldner and French first lady Cecilia Sarkozy arrive in Libya to negotiate the medics' release.

July 24 2007: All six are transferred to Bulgarian custody and return home. On their arrival, Bulgaria's president pardons them.