HOC Secretary General Sergio D'Elia slammed Libyan...

HOC Secretary General Sergio D'Elia slammed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's comments against Turkey's EU membership.
Writing on his personal website on the issue, which he described "of great strategic importance to the Mediterranean region" Gaddafi said Turkey would be Bin Laden's "Trojan horse" opening the gates for the Islamisation of Europe.
"It does not seem to me that Colonel Gaddafi is in a position to advise Europe as to what to do or not do with regard to Turkey's membership in the European Union," D'Elia sad in a statement.
"It would be the limit if the EU listened to the dictator of a country that has so often been the subject of concern by UN humanitarian bodies for its human rights situation, the summary and extrajudicial executions, the imposition of the death penalty for political or economic crimes, the use of torture and the lack of independence of the judiciary."
In motivating his opposition to Europe's membership Gaddafi indirectly raises the death penalty issue when stating that young Turkish generations would lead to the rise of Islamic parties and the application of Sharia law.
"Gaddafi is not in a position to give any lessons with regard to the death penalty either," D'Elia said.
Despite the fact that his Green Book establishes death penalty abolition as a goal for Libyan society, the government has not only not abolished capital punishment, it has increased capital crimes.
Earlier in 2004, on May 6, a Benghazi court condemned five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to the firing squad on charges of contaminating 400 children with HIV. The six have denounced torture through electric shocks and severe beatings as they were tied to beds. Two of the five nurses said they had been raped.
"Turkey's entry into the EU should help prevent it being taken over by into Islamic fundamentalism - something that Gaddafi takes for granted will happen or has already happened," D'Elia said. "Abandoning Turkey would cause the real danger, especially for Europe."