SOFIA July 24, 2007: Six foreign medics convicted of infecting Libyan children with HIV arrived in Sofia on Tuesday after being freed by Libya under a deal with the European Union. Their release after eight years in captivity ends what Libya's critics called a human rights scandal and lifts a barrier to attempts by the long-isolated north African state to complete a process of normalizing ties with the outside world."I don't know what to say, I've been living for this moment," 54-year-old nurse Snezhana Dimitrova said as the nurses and their families cried and hugged each other at the airport. Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov pardoned the six medics soon after their arrival on a French jet. The medics said they were innocent and had been tortured to confess.
A Libyan close to the negotiations said the five Bulgarians and a Palestinian who recently took Bulgarian citizenship were released under an agreement with the EU on medical aid and political ties. "There was agreement on equipping the hospital in Benghazi and treatment for the children ... All the political matters have been met," the Libyan contacted by telephone from Algiers said. The medics were accompanied by EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner and France's First Lady Cecilia Sarkozy, who had been in Tripoli to help their release. "This decision will open the way for a new and enhanced relationship between the EU and Libya and reinforce our ties with the Mediterranean region and the whole of Africa," Ms. Ferrero-Waldner said in a statement on arrival in Sofia.
The Libyan close to the negotiations said European countries had agreed to provide medical assistance for the children and to help upgrade a hospital in Benghazi, Libya's second city and the town where the infections first appeared in the 1990s. The EU had also agreed to improve its ties with Libya and build what the Libyan called a partnership that would include free trade. Bulgaria is a new EU member. "The president of the French republic and the president of the European Commission salute the humanitarian gesture of Libya and of its highest leader (Muammar Gaddafi) and commit themselves to do everything to help the children infected with AIDS," the commission said in a statement. Statements by the French presidency and the commission also thanked Qatar for its mediation.
Claude Gueant, chief of staff of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, said he had been unsure about whether the medics would actually be released until the last minute. "Right up to the arrival of the nurses at the airport at Tripoli this morning, around 6 a.m., we had doubts. Right up until the end we had doubts," Mr. Gueant, who accompanied Cecilia Sarkozy, told France's LCI television from Sofia airport. Following diplomatic talks and payment of hundreds of millions of dollars to the families of 460 HIV victims, Libya last week commuted the death sentences against the six to life imprisonment. That paved the way for the medics to return home under a 1984 prisoner exchange agreement. Tuesday's transfer of the medics became possible after European Union and French officials achieved a breakthrough in talks with Libya overnight, Bulgarian officials said. "My memories from Libya are not only bad. Ordinary Libyans are good people," said nurse Christiana Valcheva, 48, on arrival in Sofia.
Bulgaria and its allies in Brussels and Washington had suggested that not freeing the nurses would hurt Libya's efforts to emerge from decades of diplomatic isolation imposed for what the West called its support of terrorism. Libya emerged from decades of isolation in 2003 when it scrapped a program of prohibited weapons and returned to international mainstream politics. The country has begun opening its big energy reserves to foreign oil firms and the United States said this month it was sending its first ambassador to Tripoli in 35 years.
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