(Libya) HIV medics released to Bulgaria

[Eugene]

Source: BBC News

Last Updated: Tuesday, 24 July 2007, 05:28 GMT 06:28 UK

HIV medics released to Bulgaria

Six medics who were serving life sentences in Libya are
on a plane to Bulgaria, French and Bulgarian officials
say.

The five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were
convicted of infecting Libyan children with HIV.

An EU delegation has been in the Libyan capital, Tripoli,
to broker a deal to free the nurses and doctor.

The six, who have always denied the charges, had death
sentences commuted to life in prison last week.

-snip-

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6912965.stm

---

Source: Reuters

Nurses leave after deal on aid, ties: Libya source
Tue Jul 24, 2007 1:30AM EDT

ALGIERS (Reuters) - Six foreign medics convicted of
infecting Libyan children with HIV left Libya under an
agreement with the European Union on medical aid and
political ties, a Libyan close to the negotiations said
on Tuesday.

"They have left," the Libyan contacted by telephone
from Algiers said. "There was agreement on equipping
the hospital in Benghazi and treatment for the children
... All the political matters have been met."


Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL2455707320070724

[SpikeTss]

1. Does that mean the ransom has been paid to the Libyan terror-regime?

So, let me recapitulate: The Libyan regime, which in the Arabian world
is bragging about blowing up American airliners, killing US soldiers in
bomb blasts and financing most all terror groups worldwide, had abducted
Bulgarian nurses, who were in the country to help improve their neglected
medical system, then demanded a ransom of 438 million dollars and
the West really pays this?

Interesting, in pre-Bush times a back-stabbing regime like the Libyan
would be isolated and US citizens would be protected from terrorists
like the Libyan killers.

Let's see what the Libyan terror tycoons will do with the money.
Terror cells and bomb-makers worldwide will rejoice!

Which US airliner will be the firework the Libyans will celebrate this with?

[Eugene]

2. Conflicts end. Settlements are made. That's diplomacy.

This isn't 1988. Libya's war with the West has
been over for quite some time.

Libya wants to be a part of the world community.
Libya has paid out damages for the airliner
bombings and has dismantled its nuke program.
The "blood money" payment for the nurses, while
repugnant, is part of the process.

[SpikeTss]

3. Wow! Kidnapping nurses and threatening to murder them

expresses a wish to be 'part of the world community' ?

That's rich! So we should stop killing the Taleban
in Afghanistan and instead assist them in their efforts
in becoming part of the world community. Their latest
actions clearly show that they are on the right way,
the Libyan way of re-integration:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2127720.ece

'Qari Yousef Ahmadi, a Taleban spokesman, has insisted that the 23
Koreans, including 18 women, will be freed only if the Afghan
Government releases 23 militants from its jails.'

Let's celebrate then! The Taleban are part of the world
community again as well. I bet they get money from the Libyans,
too!

[Eugene]

6. Kidnap? Libya arrested the nurses in Libya on trumped up charges.

The nurses' treatment at the hands of the Libyan
"justice" system was typical of a repressive
regime (political scapegoating, torture, etc.),
but it was not an act of terror.

As for the Taliban situation, you have combatants
grabbing hostages in an active and reging dirty war.
Apples and oranges.

[SpikeTss]

7. Ask the doctor and the nurses if the define torture by Libyans

not as 'terror'. They certainly will. And as the bombings
by Libya against the West have proved, the Libyans are very
effective, when it comes to causing pain and desperation
among the victims of their vicious regime.

But, as I said, in the times of Bush, Blair and their henchmen
those details are not being reported by 'our' media outlets.
Instead we celebrate, that vicious regimes like the Libyan one
accepted a ransom of almost half a billion dollars, which the
Libyans will certainly invest in terror against us and more
suppression of the Libyan people.

Do you want an example, what Bush's new friend looks like?
Here is one small insight into the nature of the Libyan regime:

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article1171361.ece

' Hisham Matar's family lived in a beautiful house in Tripoli,
with servants, a fleet of cars and a glittering social life.
Then came Colonel Gaddafi's bloody Libyan revolution.
In this moving account, the author recalls a childhood marked
by escape attempts, British exile, and the unexplained disappearance
of his beloved father (...)

In 1996, a massacre took place in the prison of Abu Sleem.
Between sunset of the 28 July 1996 and dawn the following day, the Libyan
authorities shot more than 1,300 political prisoners. News of the massacre
would not filter out of Libya until 2002. My father's last letter was sent
from Libya in 1995. '

So, the Libyan terror regime is truly on their way into the world
community. Now they have a lot of money to do more wonderful things!

[rodeodance]

4. The accord included measures to improve the medical care of children with AIDS in Libya, the French

July 24, 2007
Libya Frees Foreign Medical Workers in H.I.V. Case
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 1:42 a.m. ET

PARIS (AP) -- Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor sentenced to life in prison in Libya for allegedly contaminating children with the AIDS virus left Tripoli Tuesday on board a plane with the French president's wife, France's presidential palace said.

The delegation, which had arrived in Tripoli on Sunday to negotiate their return home, included the European Union commissioner for foreign affairs, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, and chief French presidential aide Claude Gueant. The plane was heading to Bulgaria, the Elysee Palace said.

France had been seeking the return home of the six -- in jail for the past eight years -- in a final goodwill gesture by Libya after it commuted their death sentences in favor of life in prison.

The accord included measures to improve the medical care of children with AIDS in Libya, the French presidential palace said.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso ''welcome the gesture of humanity by Libya's highest leader and are committed to doing everything to help children with AIDS,'' the statement said. They also expressed gratitude to Qatar for mediating the case........

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-France-Libya.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

[rodeodance]

5. what a horrible several years for these people. I am glad they are finally safe.

[rodeodance]

8. Bulgarian medics pardoned upon return (AP)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070724/ap_on_re_eu/bulgaria_libya;_ylt=ApVh57hoxhWrfaIEWuJaCeKbOrgF

Bulgarian medics pardoned upon return

6 minutes ago

SOFIA, Bulgaria - Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were pardoned by President Georgi Parvanov upon their arrival in Sofia on Tuesday after spending eight and a half years in prison in Libya.


The medics, who were sentenced to life in prison in Libya for allegedly contaminating children with the AIDS virus, arrived on board a plane with French first lady Cecilia Sarkozy and the EU's commissioner for foreign affairs, Benita Ferrero-Waldner.

[SpikeTss]

9. DNA tests prove that accusations against nurses were fabricated by the regime

A Scientific analysis indicates, that the infections were caused
by poor hygienic conditions in hospitals neglected by the Libyan
regime:

http://www.nature.com/news/2006/061204/full/444658b.html

DNA analysis indicates health workers were not to blame for infections.

An international team led by researchers from Oxford and Rome used the genetic
sequences of the viruses isolated from the patients to reconstruct the exact
phylogeny, or 'family tree', of the outbreak. Analysing the mutations that
accumulated over time allowed the researchers to work out when different outbreaks
occurred. They showed that the strain of HIV with which the children had been
infected was already present and spreading locally in the mid-1990s, long before
the medics arrived in Libya in 1998 (...)

There was already a body of scientific evidence indicating that the outbreak was
caused not by deliberate transmission, but by poor hygiene at the Al-Fateh hospital
in Benghazi, where the outbreak took place. Analysis of hospital records suggested
that the outbreak began before the medics arrived. And almost half of the HIV-infected
children were also infected with hepatitis B or C, pointing to poor hospital practices
as the cause."

[SpikeTss]

10. Libyan Hell For Bulgarian Sisters Of Mercy

Here's a very spot on commentary about this ridiculous travesty:

http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=29267

Bulgaria will also forgive Libyan debt from the 1980s and send Libya
humanitarian aid. It is no wonder the Libyans, as one report stated, were
always all smiles and very open over the years whenever compensation was
mentioned.

The truly unpardonable aspect of the whole affair, however, is not Gaddafi’s
half human behavior (which was to be expected), but rather the Europeans’
forgetting of Churchill’s words of never giving in to tyranny and dishonor (...)

And if all this isn’t shameful enough, Sarkozy even phoned (Gaddafi), after the
sentence commutation and said he was going to start his Africa tour in Libya.
Talk about dhimmi status! Unlike Ronald Reagan, who realized that a wild beast
like Gaddafi could only be tamed with a whip and had Libya bombed in 1986 for
the Libyan dictator’s terrorist acts, the Europeans have lost all manly vigor."

This is like a real-life performance of a play from the theatre of the absurd.

[DemExpat]

11. Murky deal indeed IMO.....

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/07/24/recipe-to-end-a-libyan-standoff/


July 24, 2007, 8:54 am
Recipe to End a Libyan Standoff
By Mike Nizza

Behind the happy news in Sofia, Bulgaria, this morning of the freedom of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor was a complicated, murky deal worked out among representatives of Libya, Bulgaria, France, the European Union and even Qatar. Here’s the breakdown so far.

Improved E.U.-Libya Ties
The release would not have been possible without a deal to improve ties between the European Union and Libya, officials of Bulgaria and the European Union said. According to BBC News, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the union’s external affairs commissioner, brokered the deal during several visits to Libya. Today, she heralded “a new page in the history of relations between the E.U. and Libya.”

An unnamed Libyan official told the Sofia News Agency that the agreement “guaranteed stability in our relations with the E.U. member countries and a partnership agreement with the bloc.” The partnership agreement reportedly has several parts, according to Foreign Minister Mohammed Abdel-Rahman Shalgam of Libya:

Lifetime medical assistance for 400 infected children; Aid in reconstructing two hospitals, including the site of the H.I.V. outbreak; And, according to the BBC, a pledge to open the European market to Libyan farm and fishery produce, to give technical assistance for the restoration of archaeological monuments and to provide E.U. grants for Libyan students.

The $400 Million
The families of the 400 children who were infected with H.I.V. received $1 million each in “blood money.” Colonel Qaddafi’s son, Seif al-Islam, told the French newspaper Le Figaro last week that the money was released up after Bulgaria, Slovakia, Croatia and the Czech Republic forgave $400 million in Libyan debts.

Today, though, President Sarkozy of France insisted that not even “the smallest financial contribution” was made to Libya. The families had initially demanded $10 million each, equivalent to the payments Libya made to the families of people who were killed in the Pan Am airliner bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland.

-------------snip------------------------

DemEx