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Following are excerpts from an interview with Dr. Ashraf Al-Hajouj, the Palestinian doctor recently been released from a Libyan jail, where he was jailed following the Benghazi AIDS scandal. The interview aired on various TV channels in August, 2007:
Al-Jazeera TV, August 9, 2007
Interviewer: Sayf Al-Islam Al-Qadhafi, the son of Libya's leader, admitted on Al-Jazeera TV that "the doctor and the Bulgarian nurses were tortured." Could you first describe this torture? Al-Qadhafi's son said that the torture was only meant to intimidate you.
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Dr. Ashraf Al-Hajouj: Over the past five years, Sayf Al-Islam Al-Qadhafi has been slowly revealing the truth about the Behghazi children massacre.
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I demand that he refrain from employing political hypocrisy. I am not trying to steal the spotlight, to blow things out of proportion, or to lie. All I am saying is the truth and nothing but the truth. Here's what happened. We were tortured like animals for ten months, from the moment we reached the place where they kept the police dogs. We were tortured with electricity, beatings, and deprivation of sleep and of food. We were methodically terrorized by the Libyan security agencies in that prison. They threatened me with rape. They said to me: "In Egypt, we use apes to rape the prisoners, but here in Libya we use dogs." They also threatened to rape one of my sisters. All this really happened.
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Interviewer: Are you upset that even though you are a Palestinian, the Palestinian leadership did not do anything to help you?
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Dr. Ashraf Al-Hajouj: With regard to the Palestinian government, which abandoned me... I say to all the Palestinian officials who visited Libya: Shame and disgrace will follow you to the last day of your lives, because you abandoned me.
Interviewer: But Khaled Mash'al, the head of the Hamas political bureau, called Al-Qadhafi, and talked with him about the need to release you.
Dr. Ashraf Al-Hajouj: Mahmoud Al-Zahhar visited Libya in the summer of 2006, if my memory serves me. I personally asked the representative of the Palestinian embassy, who visited me, to tell Mahmoud Al-Zahhar that he should come and see me. But [Al-Zahhar] said to him: "Let's not open up this issue now." The Palestinian state – including the Hamas government – abandoned me. As for Khaled Mash'al, who tried to wash his hands clean, or to look good in the eyes of the world, by talking with me in the very last hours – shame on him.
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Al-Arabiya TV, August 17, 2007
Dr. Ashraf Al-Hajouj: Sir, we are innocent. Allah gave us the strength to endure this ordeal, which lasted eight and a half lean years, as a result of the torture we suffered for the 14 months we spent in the police dog department in Tripoli.
Interviewer: So you are saying that after this period you were no longer tortured, right?
Dr. Ashraf Al-Hajouj: We were not subjected to physical torture, but we were subjected to psychological pressure between 2000 and 2007.
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The city of Beghazi suffered a severe shortage of medical supplies. This is known to many people in Benghazi. There isn't a single person who does not know this. That's one thing. Secondly, the children's hospital in Benghazi, during the time I worked there, was even worse than an animal pen. Libya should care about its hospitals, before it cares about African countries, for example.
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In 1999, the Palestinian ambassador sent a letter to the late Yasser Arafat, in which he said that he had met with me, and that I had admitted to him that I was a Mossad and CIA agent. He also wrote that he had given me $5,000, another $5,000 to my family, and that he had hired me a lawyer. I swear by Allah that I never met him.
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Interviewer: You said elsewhere that you had worked with the Revolutionary Committees in Libya, and that you believed in the principles of the Libyan revolution. Do you still believe in the Libyan revolution?
Dr. Ashraf Al-Hajouj: I would renounce it, even if it were the religion that descended from Allah.
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