Amid the unprecedented popular unrest in Libya, a senior official from the Jamahiriya came up with a long-awaited admission about the innocence of the Bulgarian nurses condemned for the deliberate infection of 400 Libyan children with HIV. The former Libyan Minister of Justice Mostafa Mohamed Abdel-Jalil said in an interview for the Arabic satellite TV channel Al Jazeera that the Gaddafi regime was responsible for the infection of the children in Benghazi. Abdel-Jalil pointed to the tragedy with the lethal epidemic as one example of the crimes committed by the regime against its own people.
After eight years of imprisonment and inhuman torturing the Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor sentenced do death were released in mid-2007 in the wake of difficult EU talks with Muammar Gaddafi. The final operation for their release from Libyan prison was led by French President Nicolas Sarkozy. In the course of talks Bulgaria wrote off an old Libyan debt worth USD 130 million. During hearings at the parliamentary committee in France focused on the liberation of the medics, the price for the release finally surfaced – notably, a visit with honors of the Libyan dictator to France. The traditional pitching of Gaddafi’s tent on the grounds of the Elysee Palace produced a wave of discontent from the French public. The whole development was simply part of realistic politics that big democracies had been conducting with the Arab world that has been recently brewing for change.
Bulgaria hailed the international deal for the Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor because it meant saving six innocent lives from death ruled in a farcical trial. Snezhana Dimitrova, Valya Cherveniashka, Kristiana Vulcheva, Valentina Siropulo, Nassia Nenova and Ashraf al Hajuj could celebrate their freedom. However, there was bitterness in their hearts that remained – stemming from that the Libyan Court never admitted about their innocence. Owing to the efficient Libyan propaganda, for many people in Arab countries, they continued bearing the smear of mass killers of children. Palestinian doctor Ashraf Al Hajuj lodged lawsuits in both the Hague and Paris courts of justice, and the Bulgarian nurses – in the Sofia Court, against Muammar Gaddafi, the real culprit for the epidemic among children in Benghazi, for the put-up charges and for the inhuman treatment of the Bulgarian nationals. For objective reasons, these lawsuits have only had symbolic meaning so far. In the wake of the admission made by the former Libyan Justice Minister, however, now they stand the chance of assuming more practical dimensions. Finally, the truth has triumphed. The Bulgarian medics having survived brutal torturing and having born the huge moral burden of maybe the worst accusation in this world – of infanticide, do have the right to this moral retribution.
Translated by Daniela Konstantinova
По публикацията работи: Maria Dimitrova
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