Bulgaria to ask for return of medics

Bulgaria to ask for return of medics

The pact would allow the medics to be returned to their home country, after which the Bulgarian president can order their pardon, defense attorney Hari Halalambiev said.

“The Bulgarian state and the institutions are doing everything necessary for the quick realization of … the agreement for the legal cooperation,” Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov said Wednesday.

He said it was inappropriate to discuss the issue of pardons at this point.

“Let’s not run ahead of the wind,” he said.

The Libyan Supreme Judicial Council, a nine-member political body headed by the Libyan justice minister, commuted the death sentences late Tuesday.

“This is a good result. I expect the legal agreement between Bulgaria and Libya to be put into motion within two or three days, according to which those with sentences other than death can undergo their punishment in their homeland,” Osman Bizanti, another of the medics’ defence attorneys, said Tuesday night.

Tripoli is ready to discuss the deportation of the medics to Bulgaria, Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel-Rahman Shalqam told Bulgarian media.

The judicial council had been expected to rule on the sentences on Monday, after the five nurses and one doctor were sentenced to death for the third time last week. It had the option of confirming, overturning, or altering the sentences.

The decision was made after weighing two newly signed documents. One document signed by the medical workers asked that they be pardoned and declared that they gave up all legal claims against Libya for the eight years they spent in prison.

The families of the infected children signed a second document in which they gave up their demand for the death sentences and agreed to be compensated with US $1 million per child.

Legal experts say that two remaining cases accusing the medics of libel may impede their return. A Libyan court found the nurses and doctor innocent in the first trial on Wednesday, but that decision is likely to be appealed, Bizanti told Bulgarian media. The ruling on the second case is scheduled for September.

The five Bulgarian nurses - Kristiana Vulcheva, Nasya Nenova, Snezhana Dimitrova, Valentina Siropulo and Valya Chervenyashka - and Palestinian doctor Ashraf el-Hajouj have been in prison since February 1999. El-Hajouj received Bulgarian citizenship in June.

After an HIV/AIDS epidemic broke out at the children’s hospital in the Libyan city of Benghazi where they were working, the six were arrested and charged with deliberately infecting more than 400 children with the HIV virus.

International scientists investigated the case and produced a report insisting that the epidemic was caused by poor hygiene at the hospital. A Libyan court ignored the report and sentenced all six to death in May 2004. A retrial ordered by Libya’s Supreme Court concluded in December 2006 by again issuing death sentences.

“The decision of the Supreme Judicial Council of Libya is a big step in a positive direction. For us the case will be over when our compatriots return to Bulgaria,” Foreign Minister Ivaylo Kalfin said. He could not specify a time frame for the group’s expected repatriation.