EU relieved over Libya’s decision to spare Bulgarian nurses

Top EU officials breathed a sigh of relief after the Libyan High Judicial Council decided to overturn death sentences against five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, accused of having deliberately infected some children with HIV/AIDS.

“The fact that the High Judicial Council did not uphold the death sentence is a first relief”, said Commission President José Manuel Barroso and External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner in a joint statement on 17 July 2007. 

The statement came after Libya’s High Judicial Council overturned the death sentences, upheld less than a week earlier by the Supreme Court, and commuted them into life sentences (EURACTIV 12/07/07). 

”However, our objective is a solution which allows for the departure of the Bulgarian and Palestinian medical personnel from Libya and their transfer to the EU as soon as possible”, they added. 

Although the Judicial Council did not specify what the immediate fate of the detainees would be, the decision could allow for them to be extradited into Bulgarian custody, under a 1981 prisoner exchange agreement. The Bulgarian foreign minister said work on implementing the transfer would begin as of 18 July. 

According to the nurses’ defence coordinator Trayan Markovski: ”The Bulgarian Presidency would have the power to pardon” them once they are back in Bulgaria. 

The medics, imprisoned since 1999, have all denied the charges against them, saying their confessions were extracted under torture. 

A spokesman for the Libyan children’s families, Idriss Lagha, said that the families had withdrawn their demand for execution after receiving compensation payments, thus laying the ground for the Judicial Council’s decision. 

The decision was also helped by the fact that the six accused have committed, in writing, not to pursue the Libyan state for the eight years they have spent in prison. 

The High Judicial Council’s ruling not only paves the way to their release, it also lifts a dark cloud that had been hovering over relations between the EU – which Bulgaria joined in 2004 – and Libya. 

”We will now study the ruling and its implications with the Libyan authorities and others involved. But we do hope that this tragic and long-running case can be brought to a speedy solution,” said Barroso and Ferrero-Waldner. 

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