By DPA
Amsterdam (The Netherlands) : The Palestinian doctor sentenced to death by the Lybian authorities for deliberately infecting over 400 children with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in July 2007 has filed a complaint with the UN Human Rights Committee, his attorney said Wednesday.
Attorney Liesbeth Zegveld said in a statement published Wednesday she had filed the complaint on behalf of her client Ashraf El-Haggog Gomma Tuesday to protest serious human rights violations committed against himself and the five other Bulgarian medics in the Benghazi hospital case.
The complaints relate to torture and inhuman or degrading treatment, denial of the right of security and liberty of the person, the right to a fair trial and imposition of an arbitrary death sentence.
Zegveld said her client’s trial had been seriously flawed. She claims he was tortured on numerous occasions during the eight years he served in a Libyan prison, presumably to force him to confess to the charges.
The Palestinian doctor was prosecuted in Libya together with five Bulgarian nurses for allegedly infecting 426 children with HIV/AIDS at the Benghazi Children’s hospital in Libyan capital Tripoli in 1999.
He was sentenced to death four times in Libya, most recently July 11, 2007, before the Supreme Judicial Council of Libya commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment.
Following strong international negotiations, Libya transferred the medics to Bulgaria July 24 to serve their sentence, but they were immediately pardoned and released by the Bulgarian authorities upon arrival in Sofia.
El-Haggog does not live in the Netherlands but is represented by a Dutch lawyer because his immediate family resides there. He was given Bulgarian citizenship just after his release from Libya.