YouAreNotAlone

In a hospital in Lybia, 438 children and 20 mothers were infected with AIDS. What is easier than to blame some foreigners: recently arrived five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor was accused of having done the infections intentionally, and sentenced to death for it. Twice, in the retrial, after the dismissal of scientific evidence for the infections preceding the arrival of the accused in Lybia, published in Nature, as having arrived too late. The case was now referred to the Supreme Court of Lybia.

The equation for Lybian ruler Qaddafi is: international pressure on one hand; appear weak in the eyes of the whipped-up part of public opinion (which believes the scientific evidence published in Nature is secret service fabrication), and deface his own bureaucracy (hospital managers and judiciary) on the other hand. It seemed that the Supreme Court converting the death sentences to life imprisonment would be the best for him. Not for the nurses and the doctor, not to mention potential further AIDS-infected children.

But, Qaddaffi now being our friend again, some forces in the EU wouldn't support exerting stronger pressure. Some governments are hypocritical about the maxims of opposing sham trials and death sentences (and EU solidarity). This time, no superpower with a boot to lick is involved -- but economic interests, in particular oil and gas imports are.

However, pressure was then stepped up (sometimes too much, with Dubya intervening), finally involving diplomacy by the German EU presidency and some grandstanding by new French President Sarkozy and his wife.

The solution was indeed commuting the death sentences to life inprisonment, and then extraditing the six after they agreed to not press damage cases and Bulgaria and the EU paying the effective ransom into a Lybian fund handing out $1 million damages to each of the victims' families. On the morning of 24 July 2007, the five nurses and one doctor arrived on a French government plane in Bulgaria.

Read more on the case in diaries on ET:

• Seven Years in Lybia by JulyMorning
• You Are Not Alone! by Navaros
• Bulgarian Nurses Freed by DoDo
• Bulgarian nurses on plane to Sofia by gradinski chai