Ashraf Ahmad El-Hajouj (Bulgarian: Ашраф Ал Хаджудж) is a Palestinian-Bulgarian medic who was the principal defendant on the HIV trial in Libya. Born in 1969, he moved together with his parents to Libya in 1972 from Egypt, where his father was working as a senior teacher of mathematics. El-Hajouj grew up and studied in Libya. He was in the last month of his internship when he was kidnapped and accused of infecting more than 400 children with HIV-virus. The co-accused were five Bulgarian nurses (Kristiana Valcheva, Nasya Nenova, Valya Chervenyashka, Valentina Siropulo and Snezhana Dimitrova).
In February 2000 began the first trial against them. They were accused for deliberately infecting the children with HIV, conspiracy and adultery. The nurses and El-Hajouj had recognized that the confessions were extracted under tortures they were subjected to during first year of their detention.[1]
In May 2004 they were sentenced to death by shooting. The defence team told the court that HIV was present in the hospital of Benghazi, before the nurses began working there in 1998.[2]
In December 2005 the Libyan court commuted the sentence and ordered a new trial. On December 19, 2006 the defendants were sentenced to death again.
On July 11, 2007 the Libyan Supreme Court confirmed the death sentences. Later the Supreme Court changed its verdict to the life sentence. On July 24, 2007 after a negotiation of the French president Nicolas Sarkozy the Bulgarian nurses and El-Hajouj, who received Bulgarian nationality in June 2007, departed to Bulgaria, according to the protocol of prisoners exchange.
After being released, El-Hajouj settled down together with his family in the Netherlands. In 2010 he published in the Netherlands a book about his sufferings in Libyan prison, named "Khaddafi's scapegoat" (Dutch: Khaddafi's zondebok)