Bulgaria gives medics heroes' welcome

BULGARIA:Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of infecting 460 Libyan children with HIV were finally freed from jail yesterday after eight and a half years during which they say they were raped and tortured and sentenced to death for a crime they did not commit.

The six medics, whose plight had blocked Libya's rapprochement with the West, had their death sentences commuted last week after compensation was paid to the infected children's families, and they were released after the European Union agreed to re-establish full ties with Tripoli.

They arrived around 10am at Sofia airport on an official French jet, accompanied by Cecilia Sarkozy, the wife of France's president, and EU external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner, who has led the arduous diplomatic struggle to free them.

In ecstatic scenes on the runway, relatives hugged the tearful returnees as flowers were pressed into their arms, the cameras of scores of photographers clicked and Bulgaria's president welcomed them, before granting all the medics an official pardon - including the Palestinian doctor, Ashraf Alhajouj, who was recently granted Bulgarian citizenship.

"I know that I am free. I know that I am in Bulgaria but even though I have incessantly hoped, prayed for that, I still cannot believe it," said nurse Kristiana Valcheva.

"They told us at four in the morning. They woke me up. At a quarter to six we passed through the big gate of the prison and we were taken to the VIP area of the airport and to the French plane," she recalled.

"You know that hope dies last. We always had hope, although we were quite sceptical and were afraid to say it."

Snezhana Dimitrova clasped her son and declared: "I lived for this moment. It happened ... I just do not know what to say... I lived to see it happen. The death sentences do not exist any more. It's as if this had never been ... as if I had never been found guilty of anything. I am happy now."

International HIV experts who studied the case said the outbreak in a hospital in the city of Benghazi probably began before the medics even started work there and was caused by poor hygiene practices rather than deliberate infection.

Libyan leader Muammar Gadafy has linked the medics' case to the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing, for which he was forced to pay compensation and one of his intelligence agents was jailed.

Tripoli had demanded $10 million compensation for each infected child - the same sum it paid to relatives of each of the 270 victims of the Lockerbie disaster.

Ultimately, the family of each infected child received $1 million from the Gadafy Foundation, which is run by one of the Libyan leader's sons. European Union and Bulgarian officials insist they did not fund the compensation deal.

While the EU and Washington said the medics' release would pave the way for closer ties with Libya, which has Africa's largest oil reserves, the Gadafy Foundation admitted that it had doubts about the case against the "Benghazi Six".

"We respect the Libyan justice system but we had reservations over its decisions," said Salah Abessalam, the director of the charity.

Dr Alhajouj is expected to join his family later this week in the Netherlands, where they were granted asylum after receiving death threats in Libya.

The five nurses said it would take them some time to re-adjust to freedom.