Freed from Libya

last updated 8 January 2015

Sofia, Bulgaria

Five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor held in Libya for eight years on murder charges flew home to Bulgaria this week. Libya agreed to release the six—convicted on what most observers considered trumped-up charges that they infected children with HIV—after French President Nicolas Sarkozy struck a deal with Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. Under the agreement, each of the 438 Libyan children who contracted AIDS in an unsanitary Libyan hospital will receive $1 million, the hospital will get modernized, and Libya was promised E.U. trade ties. Sarkozy, elected two months ago, made the Bulgarians’ cause a priority. “They were ‘French’ because they were unjustly accused, and were suffering,” he said. “They had to be gotten out of there, and that’s what we did.”