[NYTr] And, Sure Enough, Libya Frees the Imprisoned Medics

Tue Jul 24 12:05:46 EDT 2007

[Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, formerly accused
of infecting Libyan children with HIV, have been freed along with
another doctor who'd been released from prison but not permitted to
leave Libya. Amazingly, it's all being attributed to Libya's coming out
of purdah by abandoning nuclear weapons plans and forking over cash
compensation for the Lockerbie bombing -- as if the guilty verdict for
the one Libyan convicted of the bombing, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al
Megrahi, had not been overturned, as if Libya had admitted guilt, as if
Libya had never accused the CIA or Mossad in either event. All the news
that's "fit" for the Gray Lady's readership. There much's background on
this saga. See the end of the story for some links, which contain
further references to earlier coverage -NY Transfer]

The New York Times - Jul 24, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/24/world/europe/24cnd-Bulgaria.html

Freed by Libya, Nurses Arrive in Bulgaria

By MATTHEW BRUNWASSER

SOFIA, Bulgaria, July 24 — After more than eight years in jail in
Libya, five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor stepped off the
French presidential plane here in Bulgaria’s capital early this morning
where they were greeted by crying relatives and Bulgaria’s top
officials.

They were accompanied by the European Union’s foreign affairs
commissioner, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, and the wife of France’s
president, Cécilia Sarkozy, who had helped secure their release and had
flown with the medical workers from Libya.

In a press conference at the airport terminal, standing in front of the
nurses, Bulgarian foreign minister, Ivailo Kalfin, said that the
Bulgarian president, Georgi Parvanov, had pardoned the medical workers,
thus ending all their legal liabilities, to the emotional applause of
the waiting crowd.

“I waited so long for this moment,” one of the nurses, Snezhana
Dimitrova, said on being reunited with her family, the Associated Press
reported.

The release completes a rapprochement with Libya, which not long ago
was largely shunned in the world community. A turning point came when
it publicly abandoned a program to develop weapons of mass destruction
and made payments to the families of the people who died in the 1988
Lockerbie bombing. That led to Washington restoring diplomatic ties.

Libya’s foreign minister said that Libya and the European Union agreed
to develop a “full partnership” after the release of the medical
workers, with the Europeans promising help for Libyan hospitals and
infrastructure.

In Brussels, the European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso,
said today the European Union would now move to normalize trade and
political ties with Libya.

“We hope to go on further normalizing our relations with Libya, our
relations with Libya were in a large extent blocked by the
non-settlement of this medics issue,” Mr. Barroso told reporters.

The medical workers’ plight began in 1999 when they were charged with
intentionally infecting 400 Libyan children with H.I.V., the virus that
causes AIDS, at the Benghazi Children’s Hospital where they worked in
Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city.

The Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, said that the nurses had
acted on the orders of the Central Intelligence Agency and Israel’s
intelligence agency, the Mossad, and that their actions were part of a
plot to destabilize the Libyan state.

The release comes at the end of eight years of imprisonment, alleged
torture to extract confessions, three trials, and two separate death
sentences. Bulgaria consistently said the medical workers were not
guilty.

It follows the dramatic intervention by Mrs. Sarkozy, the French
president’s wife, whose direct diplomatic initiative to free the
medical workers over recent weeks has rattled other European Union
officials and even officials in France’s own foreign ministry.

The deal for the medical workers’ release included measures to improve
the medical care of children with AIDS in Libya, the French
presidential palace said, without giving details.

Following the release today, the French president said he would travel
to Libya on Wednesday “to help Libya rejoin the international
community.” He said neither France nor the European Union paid any
money to Libya for the medical workers’ release. Mr. Sarkozy thanked
Qatar for mediating their release but gave no further details about the
role that the small Persian Gulf country may have played in resolving
the crisis.

Both Mr. Sarkozy and his wife, Cecilia, will visit Bulgaria in
September, the office of the Bulgarian president said.

Libya agreed to release the medical workers only after the families of
the infected children accepted about $1 million each last week in
exchange for dropping their demands for the medical workers to be
executed.

Under Libya’s legal code, which follows Islamic law, the families had
the right to grant clemency in return for “blood money.” They had
demanded $10 million for each child infected, the same amount that
Libya agreed to pay each of the families of the 270 people killed in
the Lockerbie bombing.

The families received the $1 million payments after Bulgaria agreed to
forgive Libya’s cold-war-era foreign debt, freeing the cash that was
paid as compensation.

Colonel Qaddafi’s son, Seif al Islam, who heads a foundation which
directed negotiations between the families and the Libyan state, said
that Libya provided the money, following the agreement to forgive the
debt.

He said Slovakia, Croatia and the Czech Republic had also contributed
by forgiving Libyan debt, making up the more than $400 million that was
transferred to the families, although these countries deny the claim.

After the families of the infected children received the payments,
Libya’s highest judicial council last week commuted the medical
workers’ death sentences to life in prison.

That opened the way for the medical workers to be sent to Bulgaria,
where they could be pardoned under a 1984 prisoner exchange agreement.

Bulgaria has a bilateral agreement with Libya that provides for
citizens of one country convicted of crimes in the other to serve their
sentences at home.

In June, Bulgaria granted the Palestinian doctor citizenship to make
him eligible for transfer under the agreement.

”Welcome home and may there be no more big causes in the future which
we need to call on our partners to help us with,” said Mr. Kalfin, the
Bulgarian foreign minister, who thanked public opinion in Bulgaria and
Europe, the media, and Bulgaria’s European partners for helping win the
release. Bulgaria formally joined the European Union in January this
year.

Ms. Ferrero-Waldner said the release of the medical workers by Libya
would improve that country’s relations with the European Union. “This
decision will open the way for a new and enhanced relationship between
the E.U. and Libya and reinforce our ties with the Mediterranean region
and the whole of Africa,” she said.

The Libyan foreign minister, Abdul-Rahman Shalqam, told reporters in
Tripoli that an agreement signed between Libya and the European Union
calls for “the preparation of a full partnership” between the two
countries.

He said the European Union could start to include Libya in regional
trade and aid ties with other Mediterranean countries.

The medical workers and their families spoke of their relief following
their release.

“I don’t want to look back, I want to look forward,” Zlatko Georgiev, a
Bulgarian doctor who was also caught up in the confrontation, told
reporters. He served four years in Libya, then was released but not
permitted to leave Libya. He returned today with the nurses and
Palestinian doctor.

“I feel wonderful, I’m happy,” said Marian Georgiev, the son of Zdravko
Georgiev, one of the detained medical workers, and stepson of Kristyana
Vulcheva, the nurse who was named as ringleader of the alleged
conspiracy to infect the children.

He said the first thing he and his family did after leaving the airport
was to visit Mr. Georgiev’s elderly parents in Sofia.

He spoke to a reporter on the phone from the presidential residence in
Sofia, where he said the families were due to stay for several days
“for all kinds of medical tests.” He said: “Normal life is never going
to return. That which they took away from us will never come back.”

He said: "I know the French helped us a lot, and the European Union as
a whole. Libya treated us like hostages. Unfortunately, Bulgaria is a
small and weak country."

Gathered outside the airport gate to witness the workers’ homecoming
was a small crowd of well-wishers who shouted “welcome” and “victory,”
and waved flags and banners as the nurses left in vans after the press
conference.

“We still feel that Bulgaria is still partly under the Iron Curtain, so
this is a diplomatic victory which will let us have a little more
confidence in our future,” said Nartsislav Nikolov, 40, who works in
international leasing.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Background - Here are just a few links to dozens of stories in the NY
Transfer Archives on the twisted tale of Pan Am 103:

Lockerbie:The Wrongful Conviction of al Megrahi (Jul 7, 2007)
http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20070702/065392.html

Bill Blum: Lockerbie Ruling Revisited (reprise from Feb, 2001)
June 29, 2007
http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20070625/064930.html

Lockerbie evidence 'tampered with, destroyed and overlooked' (Jun 25,
2007)
http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20070625/064707.html

Inconvenient Truths: Who Put the Bomb in Pan Am 103? (Jun 22, 2007)
http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20070618/064495.html

The Crumbling Lockerbie Conviction... and Those 
Bulgarian Nurses in Libya (June 17, 2007)
http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20070611/064245.html

Regarding "Revealed: Lockerbie 'bomber' could go free" (Jun 17,2007)
http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20070611/064208.html

Scottish ministers attack No 10 over Lockerbie bomber (Jun 10, 2007)
http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20070604/063786.html

Fishy Lockerbie/PanAm 103 Conviction Unravels (Sep 13, 2006)
http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20060911/045754.html

Blum: Anti-Empire Report - Sep 5, 2005
http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20050905/022906.html

Police Chief: Lockerbie Evidence Faked by CIA (Aug 22, 2005)
http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20050822/022306.html

Libya Offers Deal to Release Nurses (Nov 18, 2005)
http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20051114/026608.html

US Resumes Diplo Relations with Libya (Jun 28, 2004)
http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20040628/002880.html

Lockerbie's Dirty Secret (Mar 31, 2004)
http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20040329/000443.html

Lockerbie, Lindauer & the CIA (Mar 19, 2004)
http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20040315/000232.html

Lindauer, Lockerbie & the Gagged CIA Agent (Mar 11, 2004)
http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20040308/000082.html

Bill Blum on the Lockerbie Verdict (Feb 11, 2001)
http://www.blythe.org/nytransfer-subs/2001mid/William_Blum_on_the_Lockerbie_Verdict

Architect of Lockerbie trial attacks guilty verdict (Feb 4, 2001)
http://www.blythe.org/nytransfer-subs/2001mid/Architect_of_Lockerbie_trial_attacks_guilty_verdict

Lockerbie Verdicts: One Guilty, One Freed (Jan 31, 2001)
http://www.blythe.org/nytransfer-subs/2001mid/Lockerbie_Verdicts:_One_Guilty,_One_Freed

PANAM 103: Mule for CIA Drug Smuggling? (Apr 18, 2000)
http://www.blythe.org/nytransfer-subs/2000cov/PANAM_103:_Mule_for_CIA_Drug_Smuggling__

Libya and Lockerbie: Covert Action Quarterly (Jun 2, 1999)
http://www.blythe.org/nytransfer-subs/99cov/Libya_-and-_Lockerbie-CAQ_

France: Libya Wants a Deal Just Like Iran's Intelligence (Oct 20, 1997)
http://www.blythe.org/nytransfer-subs/97cov/France:Libya_Wants_a_Deal_Just_Like_Iran's-Intelligence