As I have mentioned in a previous blog entry...Eight and a half years ago, the five nurses who were living and working in Libya, were falsely accused of infecting nearly 500 children with HIV. An investigation concluded that the infections came from the wards where the Bulgarian nurses had been assigned. The nurses say they were tortured into confessing their guilt. But international experts concluded that the virus appeared before the nurses’ arrival and was probably spread by contaminated needles. But the country they needed a scapegoat and saw the nurses as their answer. The Bulgarians and the Palestinian doctor were a terribly sad case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. For more than eight years these people who went to work and help the Libyans were beaten, tortured, and jailed.
And then, in recent weeks, the situation rapidly changed. Following weeks of intense behind-the-scenes negotiations involving French president Nicolas Sarkozy, his spouse Cecilia and others, an agreement was finally agreed upon. In this case the families of the infected children dropped their push for the death penalty, each family received $1 million USD, and the nurses’ sentence was commuted to life in prison. Under a long-standing agreement between Libya and Bulgaria, citizens who are convicted while abroad are allowed to serve out their prison terms in their home country. So the medics were transferred to Bulgaria, where they were greeted by hundreds of people at the Sofia airport, whereby the Bulgarian president Georgi Parvanov pardons the medics just 45 minutes after they touched home soil.
And so after almost nine years, Bulgaria’s most pressing international saga has come to a happy conclusion.
I hope that answers most of your questions...
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