Palestinian HIV Doctor Weds in Bulgaria

`I am very happy. That is a step forward and I hope everything will go well from now on,` said the doctor.

A Palestinian doctor, who had faced execution in Libya over accusations of infecting hundreds of children with HIV, married a Bulgarian on Saturday as he sought a new start after eight years in captivity.

Ashraf Alhajouj, 38, and five Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death on charges of deliberately starting an HIV epidemic in Libya were freed on July 24 after the European Union brokered a cooperation deal with Tripoli.

The six have always maintained their innocence and said they confessed under torture.

The grey-haired Alhajouj met his future wife, 30-year-old engineer Olya Megova, a week after his liberation and said he fell in love at first sight. Several weeks later he proposed.

"I am very happy. That is a step forward and I hope everything will go well from now on," said the doctor, who speaks broken Bulgarian learned from his fellow prisoners and recently received Bulgarian citizenship.

Sofia's maverick mayor Boiko Borisov, a former bodyguard to Bulgaria's late communist dictator, married the two in his office.

The couple later threw a lavish party for their guests, including Alhajouj's parents, who live in the Netherlands, the nurses, senior Bulgarian politicians and popular figures.

Alhajouj said earlier this week he wanted to live in the Balkan country and work as a doctor again but was worried about the future.

"We need help from the government to reintegrate into the society but so far we have only received promises," he said.

Tripoli jailed Alhajouj, who was born in Egypt but spent most of his life in Libya, in 1999 just two months before he was due to complete his internship in a hospital in the city of Benghazi where the HIV outbreak occurred.

The doctor says he will never forgive his Libyan jailors who he said had tortured him by giving him electric shocks to confess that he deliberately infected children with the virus that causes AIDS.