By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Libya's foreign minister brushed aside a lawsuit accusing Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi of torture, insisting Friday that method of abuse is not practiced in the country.
Abdel-Rahman Shalqam said those involved in the suit - brought earlier this week by a Palestinian doctor who spent eight years in a Libyan prison - wanted to play the victim.
"Torture doesn't exist in Libya," Shalqam said at a news conference in Paris on the penultimate day of a six-day visit by Gadhafi and his delegation. The trip - the Libyan leader's first to France in 34 years - was marked by the signing of contracts worth billions of dollars for French business.
"Anyone can show himself as a victim," Shalqam said, in an apparent allusion to the doctor, Ashraf al-Hazouz, whose lawyers filed the lawsuit in Paris on Wednesday.