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Libya slams Bulgaria 'betrayal' over pardoned AIDS medics

by Afaf Geblawi Sat Jul 28, 11:39 AM ET

TRIPOLI (AFP) - Libya on Saturday denounced a decision by Bulgaria's president to pardon six medics from life jail terms in an AIDS case as a "betrayal" and illegal.
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"The detainees should have been detained upon their arrival (in Sofia), and not freed in this celebratory and illegal manner," Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalgham told a news conference in Tripoli.

Bulgaria's actions "violated the legal procedures regarding extradition, as set down under international law and in the agreement on judicial cooperation signed between the two countries" in 1984, Prime Minister Baghdadi Mahmudi told the same gathering.

"We followed the procedure -- it is Bulgaria that betrayed us," Mahmudi said.

The premier also said that French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who made a high-profile late intervention in the case and sent his wife Cecilia to negotiate with the Libyan authorities, had expressed his "discontent" with the manner in which the medics were released.

Shalgham meanwhile criticised European countries for "joining forces behind the criminals (...) before applauding their liberation."

He denounced the "strong European pressure" exerted on Libya, and railed against "the humanitarian and international organisations who, instead of criticising the liberation of the criminals, welcomed and greeted this step."

Libya has sent fellow Arab League members a memorandum calling for the group to adopt a common stand on the affair at a meeting of representatives on Monday, the prime minister said.

Tripoli will also seek support from the African Union and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, Mahmudi added.

Held in Libya since 1999, the five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor with Bulgarian citizenship were sentenced to death after being convicted of deliberately infecting 438 Libyan children with the AIDS-causing HIV virus.

Fifty-six of the children later died.

Libya allowed them to return on Tuesday to Bulgaria, where they had been due to serve life terms in prison, but instead the six were pardoned by Bulgarian President Georgy Parvanov.

The families of the children have criticised Bulgaria's decision, and their representative Idriss Lagha again on Saturday called on Libya's government to request that Interpol rearrest the medics, and for Tripoli to cut all diplomatic ties with Sofia.

The medics were detained in 1999 and allegedly made to confess to deliberately infecting the children with the HIV virus at a hospital in Libya's second city of Benghazi where they worked.

The six were sentenced to death in 2004 on the basis of confessions by the doctor and two of the nurses who later retracted their statements, saying they had been extracted under torture.

The death sentences against the six were commuted to life in prison before the medics were extradited to Bulgaria on Tuesday following an agreement with the European Union for their release.

Under the deal, the victims' families are each to receive one million dollars and the EU normalised its relations with Libya while pledging partnerships in the fields of health, education, border control and the upkeep of the country's many archaeological sites.

Nurses Snezhana Dimitrova, Nasya Nenova, Valya Cherveniashka, Valentina Siropulo and Kristiana Valcheva and doctor Ashraf Juma Hajuj have always pleaded their innocence, while foreign medical experts blamed the AIDS outbreak on poor hygiene at the hospital predating their employment.

Since their release, the medics have spoken out about their eight-year ordeal.

"All of us were treated like animals... we were tortured for a long time, with electricity, beatings, deprivation of sleep" and drugs, Hajuj said in an interview on Thursday.

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