On Monday, the case of the doctors was submitted to the Supreme Judicial Council of Libya, which upheld the decision of the cassation court. Apparently, the medics can still hope for a pardon. After all, the head of the foundation named after Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is his son Saif al-Islam, and the announced settlement agreement was surely coordinated with the country's leader. As early as January, Saif al-Islam stated that there would be no execution: 'The court initially went in the wrong direction, changes were repeatedly made to the defendants' cases, many mistakes were made.' These words came a month after the Supreme Court, which in December 2005 sent the case for further investigation, sentenced the foreigners to death by firing squad again. The first time such a verdict was handed down in May 2004 by a court in the city of Benghazi, where the medics worked in the children's department of the Al-Fatih immunology center.
Gaddafi the elder repeatedly said after the arrest of the medics in 1999 that they, at the instigation of the American CIA and Israeli Mossad, were testing biological weapons on Libyan children. However, after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Libyan leader changed course and moved closer to the West. Gaddafi released doctors from other countries arrested in the case, including from Hungary and Poland, which joined NATO in that same 1999. In 2003, Libya effectively admitted its intelligence services' involvement in organizing the 1988 bombing of an American airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, paying $2.7 billion in compensation – $10 million for each victim. In 2004, relations with the EU were normalized, and in 2005, with the US.
The charges against Kristiana Vulcheva, Snezhana Dimitrova, Nasi Nenova, Valentina Siropulo, Valya Chervenyashka, and Ashraf al-Hajjaj have also changed. They are now accused of 'criminal negligence during experiments to find a cure for AIDS.' The defense attorneys claim that before the foreign medics arrived at Al-Fatih, there was already complete unsanitary conditions, and the investigators extracted confessions through torture and violence.
The number of infected children, according to various sources, ranged from 426 to 438, of whom 56 died. The rest are being treated in the best clinics in Europe with money from a charitable foundation, whose participants, besides Bulgaria and Libya, include the EU and the US.
In 2006, Sofia rejected Tripoli's proposal to release the Bulgarian nurses in exchange for $5.5 billion in compensation. Bulgaria considered that agreeing to this proposal would mean admitting the guilt of its citizens. But negotiations on contributions to treatment within a common charitable foundation continued, with the Gaddafi Foundation representing Libyan interests. Now, apparently, Tripoli and Sofia have managed to agree on an acceptable form of resolving the conflict.