Palestinian doctor files torture complaint against Libya with U.N. human rights body

A Palestinian doctor who was imprisoned for eight years in Libya has filed a complaint with the U.N. Human Rights Committee alleging he was tortured in captivity, his Dutch lawyer said Wednesday.

Ashraf al-Hazouz and five Bulgarian nurses were convicted in Libya of deliberately infecting more than 400 children with the AIDS virus at a hospital where they worked. The six medical workers, who were pardoned and freed in July, say their convictions were based on forced confessions.

Lawyer Liesbeth Zegveld said she hoped Libya would formally admit wrongdoing and reach a financial settlement with al-Hazouz, but that the suit, filed in Geneva on Tuesday, was necessary. "Without a case, you don't have any leverage," she said.

The Human Rights Committee oversees the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a treaty signed by Libya. Zegveld said she was confident the commission would overrule any challenge by Libya to its jurisdiction.

The committee's rulings are nonbinding, but it could recommend that Libya pay damages.

"The facts of the case are pretty clear," she said, pointing to statements made by Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, the son of Libyan ruler Moammar Gadhafi, that the detainees had been subjected to electric shocks. He made the remark in an interview broadcast on the pan-Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera.

Before their release, al-Hazouz and the nurses signed statements saying they had been treated well and would not seek to sue Libya.

Afterward, they said they underwent horrific torture in detention.

Zegveld confirmed comments made by her client, who now lives in Bulgaria, that he had been warned by authorities from the Netherlands, Bulgaria and the European Union not to launch any legal action against Libya. He said officials warned him he could undermine the improvement in relations between Libya and the West, and might jeopardize other foreign health workers in Libya.