Bulgaria’s President Georgi Purvganov has engaged himself in support for the Bulgarian medics, who returned from Libya end-July 2007, Zdravko Georgiev, one of the medics, said after a meeting with Purvanov.

The president promised to co-operate on the medics’ medical treatment and adaptation to normal life, mediapool.bg reported.

The medics were accused of deliberately infecting more than 400 Libyan children with HIV.

They were at first sentenced to death. Later their verdicts were commuted to life imprisonment. The medics were transferred in Bulgaria under judicial agreement with Libya and Purvanov pardoned them.

After arriving in Bulgaria, the medics and their families lived for a while in the presidential residence Boyana, mediapool.bg said.

Georgiev said that scientists, psychologists and psychiatrists agree that even a day in prison causes irreversible mental changes in more than 90 per cent of cases.

The medics spent more than eight years in prison.