Family of accused doctor says he is an idealist who loved children, writes David Shanks
When Ashraf al-Hajuj was arrested in Libya almost seven years ago he was an idealistic 29-year-old junior doctor who loved children and "wanted to help people".
His sister, Darin, portrays her "good brother" as ideal doctor material. "It was not for the money - money or no money, the colour of your skin - he wanted to help. Children loved him."
With five nurses from Bulgaria, he is under renewed sentence of death by firing squad on hotly contested charges of infecting 426 Libyan children with HIV. This is in spite of highly prestigious international scientific opinion that was disallowed in court.
"He had too much dreams." Darin's bad English is part of a story of displacement that has seen Ashraf's entire family move from Col Muammar Gadafy's Libya to the Netherlands.
Ashraf's family is Palestinian. His father, Ahmad, was fired from his job as a primary teacher and two of his sisters were expelled from university after his arrest. Ashraf also lost a chance of marriage.
Darin has faith in the international pressure that has included censure from the EU, the outgoing UN secretary general and the White House. But last weekend Gadafy again rejected appeals for the release of the six.
They are pawns in an international game in which Ashraf (now 37) seems one-down, according to Dr James Bowen, chairman of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign. He says Libyan police have allegedly taunted Ashraf with "you have no state standing up for you" as they beat him. On the other hand, the Bulgarian women now have an EU state behind them, he says.
The international game has included a Libyan offer to Bulgaria to swap its five nurses for a Libyan intelligence officer jailed in Scotland for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. Libya also asked for €10 million "blood money" for each of the HIV victims' families. Bulgaria rejected both deals.
Bowen fears that the Bulgarians could be freed and the Palestinian executed to placate Islamic fundamentalism in the Benghazi region, where the hospital medics worked. Gadafy is reportedly afraid of opposition there and is under pressure from angry families of more than 50 children who have died from HIV.
Prof Luc Montagnier, the French co-discoverer of the HIV virus, visited Libya in 2003 with a "special visa" from the regime. At the Benghazi hospital he identified the problem as one of hygiene and reuse of syringes. The problem had existed before the medics joined the staff in 1998, his disallowed evidence said. Asked on what grounds, Darin, a lawyer, says: "Libya courts cannot speak freely."
Montagnier's view was borne out by a team of 13 internationally renowned researchers whose findings were published last month in the science journal Nature. It had already published an open letter to Gadafy from 114 Nobel laureates, who pointed out that Montagnier's study had been requested by Libya.
Ashraf's cousin, As'ed, says from Gaza City: "They should look for who is really responsible," pointing out that Libya was under Lockerbie sanctions at the time of the infection. He says the six medics - and the infected children - are "all victims".
Originally it was alleged that the defendants had conspired "with foreign intelligence to cause an Aids epidemic in Libya". These charges were dropped in 2002 but the allegation of conspiracy endured.
Darin says, however, that Ashraf only met his five co-accused while being interrogated. In any case the Bulgarian nurses did not speak any Arabic and had little or no English. She adds that as a newly qualified doctor, Ashraf would have had little power in the hospital.
The "Benghazi Six" made confessions which Amnesty International says were obtained under torture. They were convicted and sentenced to death in 2004.
That was quashed on appeal to Libya's Supreme Court. On December 19th they were again convicted, with a further appeal open to them.
Ashraf's family has hardly seen him over the past seven years, except on TV. Their last meeting was a year ago just before his parents and four younger sisters left for Europe. In a half-hour reunion in a Tripoli jail, Darin says: "His eyes were sad but he was strong."