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SOFIA - Six Bulgarian medics convicted of infecting Libyan children with HIV arrived home in Sofia last night after being freed by Libya under a deal with the European Union.
Their release after eight years in captivity ends what Libya's critics called a human rights scandal and lifts a barrier to attempts by the long-isolated north African state to complete a process of normalising ties with the outside world.
"I don't know what to say. I've been living for this moment," 54-year-old nurse Snezhana Dimitrova said as the nurses and their families cried and hugged each other at the airport.
Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov pardoned the six soon after their arrival on a French presidential jet. The medics said they were innocent and had been tortured to confess.
A Libyan close to the negotiations said the five Bulgarians and a Palestinian who recently took Bulgarian citizenship were freed under an agreement with the EU on medical aid and political ties.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said neither France nor the European Union made any payment to Libya for their release.
The medics were accompanied by EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner and France's first lady, Cecilia Sarkozy, who had been in Tripoli to help their release.
"This decision will open the way for a new and enhanced relationship between the EU and Libya and reinforce our ties with the Mediterranean region and the whole of Africa," Ferrero-Waldner said.
The Libyan close to the negotiations said European countries had agreed to provide medical assistance for the children and to help upgrade a hospital in Benghazi, the town where the infections appeared in the 1990s.
Claude Gueant, President Sarkozy's chief of staff, said he had been unsure about their release until the last minute.
"Right up to the arrival of the nurses at the airport we had doubts," Gueant said.
A statement by the French presidency thanked Qatar for what it said was its meditation.
Following hectic diplomatic talks and payment of hundreds of millions of dollars to the families of 460 HIV victims, Libya last week commuted the death sentences against the six to life imprisonment. That paved the way for their return home under a 1984 prisoner-exchange agreement.
Bulgaria and its allies in Brussels and Washington had suggested that not freeing the nurses would hurt Libya's efforts to emerge from decades of diplomatic isolation.
- REUTERS
