Bulgaria rejects protests
SOFIA, Bulgaria -- Bulgaria on Thursday rejected Libyan protests over the presidential pardons it gave six medical workers freed earlier this week from life imprisonment in the Arab country.
"There are no legal problems with the status of the medics that returned from Libya," Prosecutor General Boris Velchev told the state news agency BTA.
Libya had accused the six of deliberately infecting more than 400 Libyan children with HIV; 50 of the children died. The nurses, jailed since 1999, were initially sentenced to death, but later had their sentence commuted to life imprisonment.
The medical workers denied infecting the children and said their confessions were extracted under torture. The charges were widely denounced abroad as false.
During their Libyan trials, international experts testified that the HIV infections were caused by unclean conditions at the hospitals where the children were treated.
The five nurses and one doctor were flown Tuesday to Bulgaria after being held for more than eight years.
In Tripoli, Bulgarian Ambassador Alexander Olshevski said Libya's Foreign Ministry had issued an official complaint Wednesday, claiming Bulgaria had violated bilateral agreements by pardoning the workers.
"After returning to Bulgaria, the medics began to carry out the sentences imposed in Libya according to the Bulgarian law. This allows the president to pardon them and he took advantage of this right," Velchev said.
He added that Bulgaria respected Libyan laws and institutions, and called on Libya to act the same way.
In Tripoli, families of the HIV-infected children voiced outrage at the pardons.
"We deeply condemn and are deeply disappointed at the absurdity and disrespect shown by the Bulgarian presidential pardon," the Libyan Association for the Families of HIV-Infected Children said Wednesday.
The medical workers are seeking legal action against the people they say tortured them while they were held in prison in Libya.
"We can forgive, but we cannot forget what has happened to us," Nasya Nenova, one of the workers, said Wednesday at the first news conference since arriving home.
Nenova, Kristiana Valcheva and Ashraf al Hazouz said they were ready to testify in an investigation of 11 Libyan police officers, which Bulgaria started in January for alleged torture of the medics.
Recalling the first months in prison, Nenova said, "it was horrifying."
"They tortured us, they did not allow us to have a lawyer. It was only after 13 months that we could meet with our lawyer and try to whisper what they were doing to us," she said.
The Libyans will be investigated for allegedly using coercion, torture and threats -- between February and May 1999 -- to extract false confessions from the medical workers, which subsequently led to their death sentences, prosecutor Nikolai Kokinov said.
However, there has been no indication Libya will let the officers go to Bulgaria for any trial.
The six were sentenced to death twice -- in 2004 and again in 2006, following a Supreme Court appeal. In 2005, they filed lawsuits against 10 Libyan officers alleging torture, but the charges were rejected by a Libyan court.