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Bulgarian medicians back home
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08.04.2009
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The released Bulgarian nurses get tangled up in a media circus, but the newspapers don’t ask the important questions.
It seemed like the ending of a World Cup Championship where the Bulgarian boys had scored against Germany. National euphoria surrounded the five women and two men as they descended from a French aircraft at Sofia Airport. Even the hard-bitten wept as the long-suffering detainees fell into the arms of their loved ones.
It was the hottest day of the year but Bulgaria’s establishment, bedecked in dark suits, lined the scorched tarmac, perhaps eager to bask in the plaudits and the reflected glory.
The country seemed to forget its problems. Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev, quick to capitalize on what he hoped would be a renewed mood of optimism, said the nation had “regained its self-confidence”. Bulgaria dominated the world’s front pages and, for once, for reasons unconnected to crime, corruption, baby smuggling, poverty or other ills.
The saga began eight years ago when Bulgarian nurses Christiana Valcheva, Nasya Nenova, Valentina Siropulo, Valya Chervenyasha and Snezhana Dimitrova, Dr Zdravko Georgiev and Palestinian Dr Ashraf Al-Hajuj were accused of deliberately infecting 400 Libyan children with the HIV virus. Six years later, Dr Georiev was acquitted but the rest were pronounced guilty and sentenced to death. The judgment, relying on confessions extracted under torture, met with international condemnation. Yet all Libyan law courts upheld the death penalty verdict and rejected appeals.
The sentences were not carried out. Libyan President Muammar Al-Qadhafi commuted them to life imprisonment and honoured a bilateral agreement with Bulgaria stipulating that nationals of one state, convinced of crimes in the other, can serve sentences at home. So it was that the nurses returned to a triumphant reception in Sofia. Minutes after they set foot on home soil, President Georgi Parvanov granted them a full pardon.
The story captured the world’s imagination. A novel based on the events has already been published. Plans were unveiled for a movie about the nurses’ story. And what better ending for such a picture than the nurses’ emotional and cathartic return? This is just where a large-scale government, political and corporate PR campaign took over.
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