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Gadhafi's Torture Prison

Medic Recalls Eight Years in Libyan Jail

Part 2: Months of Torture

I was locked into a room with three dogs during the first few days. They ordered the animals to attack me. My leg is covered with scars from their bites. I had a large hole in my knee. I was served my meals in the bowl they used for the dogs. The five Bulgarian nurses were also being kept in this torture building. Every day our tormentors told us: "We will make you suffer until you confess." The torture periods were carried out between 5 p.m. and 5 a.m.. This went on for months.

One of the things they did was to wrap bare wire around my penis. Then they would drag me around a room that was at least 40 by 40 meters. I screamed and cried.

One of the most excruciating things was their electric torture machine -- a manually operated box that works like a generator. They would attach the negative cable to a finger and the positive cable to one of my ears or my genitals. The most painful part of it wasn't the current but the fact that they could change the rate at which it was applied. When I became unconscious they would pour cold water on my naked body and continue the procedure.

During the torture with electrical shocks, they would show me the passports of the five Bulgarian nurses and say: These are Kristiana, Nasya, Valentina, Valya and Snezhana. The nurses suffered the same fate as I did. But we were unable to communicate with each other because I didn't speak Bulgarian yet.

'I Am Ashamed about the Things they Did to the Women'

Sometimes we were tortured in the same room. I saw them half-naked and they saw me completely naked when I was being given the electroshocks. We heard each other whimpering, crying and screeching. Kristiana was hung up on a window while they put me on an iron pallet and applied the electroshocks. I am ashamed to talk about all the things they did to the women. They were raped. Kristiana was forced to put a bottle in her vagina. At one point Nasya, who couldn't stand it anymore, broke off a piece of window glass and slit her wrist. They took her to the hospital, under a false name, and then they brought her back to our torture chamber.

My cell was so small that I couldn't lie down. For one year I slept with my legs pulled up to my chest, leaning against the wall of the cell. (Hazouz sits on the floor and demonstrates how he spent his nights.) I was afraid that I would lose my mind, and I asked myself again and again: Why, of all people, did they pick you?

But the worst thing was that they threatened to torture my family and rape my sisters in front of my eyes. After God, my family is the most sacred thing I have, and I am the only brother of four sisters. At one point they brought in a girl, and all I could hear was her voice, screaming: "I am your sister. I am being raped."

I gave up. Tell me what you want me to do, I said, I will sign anything -- even that I confess to being responsible for the Lockerbie plane bombing. By then the police had notified my sister, who was in medical school in Tripoli, of my arrest. My father brought her home immediately.

I was transferred to the Jadida Prison in Tripoli on April 17, 2000, and I remained there until Feb. 4, 2002. The cells were 1.8 by 2.40 meters (6 by 8 feet), and most of them contained eight prisoners. We took turns sleeping in two-hour shifts. Four men would sleep with their knees pulled up to their chests, while the other four stood over them. After one year I was moved to a 5 by 10-meter (16 by 33-foot) room, which contained 70 prisoners. We were packed in like sardines, head to foot. If I had cows I wouldn't even put them so tightly together.

The guards brought the other prisoners Libyan newspapers, which accused us of being child murderers. The Arab papers also spread these lies, picking up their stories from Libyan sources. Instead of defending me, the Palestinian envoy claimed that I had confessed to him that I was a Mossad agent and had deliberately infected the children. Many of the prisoners believed this. We Arabs are hypocrites. We know the truth and yet we believe the lies.

In February 2002, thanks to the support of Gadhafi's son, Seif al Islam, the court dropped the charges against us of conspiring against the state. But the charge of infecting the 426 children was upheld.

After that we were placed under house arrest and lived together in a house consisting of four rooms, a kitchen and a garden. A restaurant provided us with our food. We were even permitted to shop in the city and go the dentist, escorted by a policeman. There was no more torture. We had satellite TV and were allowed to receive visitors. I learned Bulgarian. When the Bulgarian foreign minister, Solomon Passy, visited us in May 2002, I asked him for Bulgarian citizenship, which I received a few weeks before our departure -- at the urging of the European Union.

'We Know that You Are Innocent'

By this point in time, intensive negotiations for a possible release were already underway. One day the chief of security for Tripoli came to the house and said: "We know that you are innocent. You will be with your families in two months." But instead the court suddenly imposed the death penalty on May 6, 2004, despite the fact that French Professor Luc Montagnier and Italian Professor Vittoria Colizzi, both internationally renowned experts, had concluded that we were innocent.

Our next stop was the death row wing at the Tripoli prison, where prisoners were kept awaiting their executions. Of course, no one is immortal, and one day I too will die. But it is a terrible feeling when someone with whom you have just shared a meal a few hours ago is suddenly taken out and all you hear is gunshots. And when you yourself sit there, waiting, afraid that your name could be next ...

It was only on May 25, 2005 that I found out that I was going to live. That was when EU Commissioner Ferrero-Waldner came to me and said: "You are not alone. Twenty-five European countries support you. They are all convinced that you and the nurses are innocent."

During Germany's presidency of the EU Council, I also received a visit from German Foreign Minister (Frank-Walter) Steinmeier. I was wearing a watch with the EU symbol on it that the EU envoy had given me. Steinmeier was surprised, and I said to him: "I hope that I too will soon be a member of the EU. My family was granted asylum in the Netherlands on Dec. 19, 2005.

When they tried to isolate me from the Bulgarian group, the EU intervened. I became increasingly hopeful that I would soon be released from hell when the wife of French President (Nicolas) Sarkozy got involved. At the request of the EU, I signed a petition to be pardoned by Gadhafi -- a condition of our release.

When Bulgarian President (Georgi) Parvanov pardoned us within a few minutes of our arrival in Sofia, I suddenly felt that I had grown wings. Telecom Bulgaria, which is supported by the Bulgarian government, promised me and the nurses that it would give each of us an apartment. I received financial assistance, and they even offered me the chance to finish my medical training for free.

It doesn't even faze me now, when I read that Tripoli is calling upon the Arab League to lodge protests against our pardon in Bulgaria, and that the parents of the infected children are demanding that we be returned to Libya. They have known for a long time that we are innocent.

But I do want to testify in a case that a Bulgarian attorney is bringing against two of the worst of our Libyan torturers. I hope the nurses will also testify. I plan to fight, even if it takes until the end of my life, to clear our names in the Arab world.

This text has been adapted from an interview conducted by SPIEGEL correspondent Renate Flottau with Ashraf al-Hazouz in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan