End in sight for medics' Libyan ordeal
A $400 million package is believed to have saved the lives of six foreign medics who faced death penalties on charges of infecting Libyan children with HIV.
from the July 18, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
On Tuesday, Bulgaria's foreign minister said that the country would consider contributing to humanitarian aid to Libya, AP reported. In previous published reports, Bulgaria said it would not pay any compensation as that would imply guilt.
The case came to a head after eight years partly because of Libya's dramatic change in international relations. The country now enjoys full diplomatic relations with the US and EU. Trade sanctions and its outcast status have been dropped. In return, Libya renounced support for militant groups; ended a weapons of mass destruction program; allowed key Libyan suspects in the 1998 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people to go on trial; and agreed to $2.7 billion in payments to families of those killed in that bombing.
The final Lockerbie payment is still outstanding, a point of tension between Libya and the US. The medics' case has been inexorably linked to the Pan Am bombing. Initially, the Libyan government demanded that the families of the infected children receive $10 million each, matching the amount allocated to some families of the victims of the Pan Am bombing.
Libya also wants Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, convicted and serving a life sentence for the Pan Am bombing, to be freed. In late June the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission ruled that Mr. Megrahi had the right to a second appeal after evidence was uncovered that indicated he may have been wrongly convicted. Earlier this month, a UN observer appointed to watch the case wrote the British government demanding a complete new trial in light of the evidence.
"In all this negotiation there have always been two lines. One issue was for us to give money for compensation. The second was to deal with al-Megrahi – the Lockerbie guy," says Georgi Milkov, a Bulgarian journalist for the newspaper 24 Hours who has covered the case and is currently in Libya. "It is connected with our case. The people who are negotiating [the Lockerbie settlement] case are the same people who are negotiating in our case."
On both sides of the issue has been a heated national constituency placing enormous pressure on their governments not to give in.
Libyan parents of the infected children threw rocks at police and fought with them last year after a decision on one of the appeals in the case was delayed. Benghazi is historically a trouble spot for the regime where just last spring Islamists rioted against the iron-fisted police state.
In Bulgaria, the nurses, as well as the doctor who has since been granted Bulgarian citizenship, have become a national cause.
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