LISBON, Oct 10, 2007 (AFP) - Palestinian-born doctor Ashraf Juma Hajjuj is slowly learning to live again after "nine years of my life were destroyed" in a Libyan jail, where he was tortured and sexually abused.
Hajjuj, who was detained in prison for eight-and-a-half years with five Bulgarian medics on charges of infecting more than 400 children with HIV-tainted blood in a hospital in Benghazi, says the wasted years were a "black hole."
"I'm trying to slowly start life again," he told AFP in an interview. "It's very difficult. We have to make up for nine lost years with our families. We are in the process of re-adapting ourselves ... It's a black hole."
The five Bulgarian nurses and Hajjuj, who had always maintained their innocence, had been sentenced to death three times for allegedly infecting 470 children with HIV, which can lead to AIDS.
Their release on July 24 followed a 460-million-dollar deal with the families of the children and tough last-minute negotiations in Tripoli, led by EU Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner.
"In the past nine years, day after day, minute by minute, second after second I felt that we would be killed," the 38-year-old said.
He said he was "tortured for long periods with electric shocks, with dogs, deprived of sleep and sexually abused," adding that the five nurses also shared the same fate.
Hajjuj says he "wants to take up my studies in medicine again" to have a "normal life."
He says the authorities told him and his co-prisoners shortly after their arrest: "We can do whatever we want with you."
"To level this horrible accusation that we infected 470 children that was like killing us both as medical professionals and as human beings," he said.
The hospital, he said, was a "pigsty, a dumping ground."
Luc Montagnier, the French virologist credited with discovering the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, worked to prove the medics' innocence.
In 2003, Montagnier and Italian professor, Vittorio Colizzi, presented evidence that the AIDS outbreak had been caused by poor hygiene and the multiple use of infected syringes at the hospital long before the arrival of the six foreigners in the late nineties.
Hajjuj, now a Bulgarian national, made a strong plea for the scrapping of the death sentence and had harsh words for the region where he was born.
"In all the Arab countries, it's easy for authorities to accuse no matter who and then charge them," he said.
"Our religion respects human rights but what occurs in these countries is shameful," he said.
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