Bulgarians HIV Trial in Libya 'Linked Directly' to Al-Megrahi

Libyan Abdel Baset al-Megrahi (C) flew out of Britain on a Libyan government jet August 20 last year after being freed from jail on health grounds by the regional government in Scotland. Photo by EPA/BGNES

Palestinian-born Ashraf Ahmad Djum'a al-Hadjudj, who spent more than eight years jailed in Libya together with Bulgarian medics following a travesty HIV trial, claims their case is directly linked to what many have called the Lockerbie fiasco.

"There is a direct link between the Libyan HIV case and the release of a Libyan jailed for the bombing of a plane above the Scottish village of Lockerbie," Ashraf Ahmad Djum'a al-Hadjudj, who was granted Bulgarian citizenship right before the release but now lives in the Netherlands, argues in his book "Qaddafi's scapegoat".

According to the doctor Libya's President, Muammar Qaddafi had him and the Bulgarian nurses arrested so that he could use them later in a deal to release the Libyan Abdel Basset al-Megrahi.

The doctor says Qaddafi told him more times than once that the six medics could only return home once he knew the Lockerbie bomber was to be released.

"Six prisoners for one; a guarantee that the Lockerbie case would be resolved in a way that was acceptable for Tripoli," says the 40-year-old doctor.

Libyan Abdel Baset al-Megrahi flew out of Britain on a Libyan government jet August 20 2009 after being freed from jail on health grounds by the regional government in Scotland.

The French parliamentary commission, which examined the rights and wrongs of the so-called "Affaire Libyenne", shed scarce light on the circumstances of the Bulgarian medics release.

The Bulgarian medics, who spent more than eight years jailed in Libya in a travesty HIV trial, were questioned in Paris during the first session of the investigation at the end of November 2007 only to extol France's former first lady.

The investigation was blessed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to examine the rights and wrongs of the so-called "Affaire Libyenne", in which the key part was played by the then First Lady Cecilia Sarkozy.

The French President has repeatedly rejected suggestions there was any kind of commercial trade-off with the Libyan leader Col Muammar Qaddafi before the five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were freed on July 24.

Cecilia made two trips to Libya before the prisoners were extradited to Bulgaria, soon after they received death sentences for allegedly infecting children with the AIDS virus.

The medics were sentenced to death in Libya on charges of deliberately infecting more than 400 children with the HIV virus, but the involvement of the Sarkozy couple in the final stages of the talks has been deemed crucial in Bulgaria.

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