Libya’s Release of 6 Prisoners Raises Criticism

In 1999, Libya accused five nurses and a physician, based in Benghazi, of deliberately infecting hundreds of children with the HIV virus that causes AIDS. Over the next eight years, the health-care providers, five from Bulgaria and one from Palestine, endured imprisonment, three trials and death sentences. Analysts suggest that the unsanitary conditions in the hospitals infected the children prior to the arrival of the foreign health workers. The European Union and the international community have long pressured Libya to release the providers. After complicated negotiations, Libya imposed convoluted conditions including $1 million payments to each child’s family, and Bulgaria forgave Libya’s foreign debt left over from the Cold War. The release is the latest of many steps by Libya’s leader Moammar Gaddafi, including the end of a program to develop nuclear weapons, to restore relations with the West. Both sides wanted the ordeal to end, and could not admit the other side might be right. Europeans have promised to work with Libyans on improving the nation’s health-care system and, in particular, treatment of AIDS. – YaleGlobal