Doctor's song of freedom inspires Libyans – USATODAY.com

We Will Stay Here, a ballad by Adel Al Mshiti, a 38-year-old doctor, has dominated the Libyan airwaves for the past six months. It's played at every demonstration, in every taxi and every shop in Libya's recently liberated capital.

"We will stay here," go the song's lyrics, "until the pain goes away."

• PHOTOS: Rebellion in Libya

"We will live here, the melody will sweeten," urging Libyans to stay in the country and endure the oppressive conditions under dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

It was the first song to come out of Libya when the revolution started. When camera crews rolled into Benghazi in the earliest days of the uprising, it was what the crowds were singing as they celebrated liberating their city.

But the story of its inspiration is joyless, as Al Mshiti told it recently in Tripoli. 

At age 22, Al Mshiti was a medical student in Benghazi when he was arrested and thrown in prison. His crime was treating the victims of a violent crackdown on anti-Gadhafi protesters in 1996. 

Too scared to go to public hospitals where they might be arrested, the injured protesters had turned to Al Mshiti and other sympathetic medical students to treat their bullet wounds. From that moment on, Al Mshiti's home was placed under surveillance.

Eventually, more than 100 armed internal security officers surrounded the house. They entered it and held his mother at gunpoint until Al Mshiti was found and taken away to the headquarters of Gadhafi's security forces in Benghazi.

For 10 days, Al Mshiti lay bound on the floor of a staircase. Guards beat him with boots and electric cables. A few days later he was transferred to a prison in Tripoli, where he spent six months in solitary confinement. His only break from confinement was when he was taken to be tortured or interrogated. FULL ARTICLE HERE: Doctor's song of freedom inspires Libyans – USATODAY.com