Libya Calls On Arab League to Cut Ties With Bulgaria

Libya has called on the Arab League to review its ties with Bulgaria after it pardoned six medical workers that Libya had jailed for allegedly infecting hundreds of children with HIV.

The workers, five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, had twice been sentenced to death in Libya for infecting some 426 children with the AIDS virus in the late 1990s. The case has been widely denounced abroad amid allegations the six were tortured into making false confessions.

Libya commuted their sentences to life in prison and allowed them to fly to Bulgaria last Tuesday, under a deal sponsored by France allowing the six medical worker to serve their sentences at home.

Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalgham said the medical workers should have been detained upon arrival in Bulgaria last week and not freed in a "celebratory and illegal manner."

The five Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor were freed as soon as they arrived in Bulgaria, following the deal struck between the European Union and Tripoli that ended their eight-year imprisonment. Libya's Prime Minister Baghdadi Mahmudi said Libya had kept their part of their agreement, but Bulgaria did not.

Voice of America