Posted on 05/07/2004 6:00:38 PM PDT by yonif
TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — Libya denounced the United States on Friday for its criticism of death sentences in a Libyan AIDS trial, saying the behavior of U.S. soldiers in Iraqi prisons has taken away the Americans' moral authority to lecture about rights abuses.
"America has no right to talk about human rights — or even animal rights," foreign ministry spokesman Hassouna al-Shawish said at a news conference Friday night.
The comments concerned a trial in eastern Libya on Thursday in which five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were sentenced to death on charges of intentionally infecting more than 400 Libyan children with the AIDS virus.
Western governments and human rights groups denounced the verdicts, saying they were based on false confessions obtained through torture, designed to draw attention away from unsanitary practices at Libyan hospitals. They demanded freedom for the sentenced foreigners.
"I think you know we've been very critical of Libyan violations of the legal and human rights of the Bulgarian medics. We find the verdict that was pronounced in the court to be unacceptable," U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Thursday.
Al-Shawish said Libya was incensed by Boucher's comments.
"We didn't want to politicize the issue, but those comments pushed us to respond," he said. "America has to be sorry and ashamed for what happened at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq instead of being sorry for the verdict."
"We don't accept interference in judiciary matters," he said. "Who gave America the right to be the judge of the world's courts?"
Yep, we should leave that to the Sudan -- the authority on such matters and the head of the UN Human Rights Commission.
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