Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi racketeered Bulgaria over the trial of the Bulgarian medics thus extorting USD 130 M from Bulgaria, Prime Minister Boyko Borisov has stated.

"I continue to claim that the world has never seen another such case of racketeering that Libya and Gaddafi personally launched against Bulgaria in the 21st century before the eyes of the entire international community," the Bulgarian Prime Minister stated on bTV. He was commenting on the popular uprising against the Gaddafi dictatorship and the evacuation of the Bulgarian citizens from Libya.

"I would like to remind everybody that the rescue of the six Bulgarian medics cost Bulgaria USD 130 M without the interest, and Gaddafi literally stole this money from us. This is the right word. Whoever wants to speak in a milder tone, they can do that," Borisov said.

Borisov referred to the case of the five Bulgarian nurses, one Bulgarian doctor, and one Palestinian doctor, who in 1999-2007 were tried in Libya for allegedly deliberately infecting some 400 Libyan children with AIDS in a hospital in Benghazi. In the trial that grabbed global media attention, the Bulgarian medics were sentenced to death but were brought to Bulgaria with the assistance of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the European Commission, and were set free.

The PM explained that he referred to the fact that one of the conciliatory measures that Bulgaria offered to Libya while the six Bulgarian medics were in the danger of being executed by the regime of Muammar Gaddafi was the writing off of the Libyan state debt to Bulgaria – amounting to some USD 130 M or BGN 300 M.

Borisov reminded that as a Mayor of Sofia prior to 2009 he approved the stripping off of all honorary titles that the Bulgarian capital had granted Gaddafi in the communist period.

On Thursayd, Libya's former Justice Minister Mustafa Abudel-Jalil has stated that not the Bulgarian medics, but the regime of leader Muammar Gaddafi was responsible for infecting more than 400 children with HIV.

Abdel-Jalil said that the scandal involving Bulgarian medics was just one of the several serious crimes conducted by Gaddafi's regime against his own people.