the libyan authorities during the era of the dictator muammar gaddafi brought serious charges against five bulgarian nurses and a palestinian doctor, who were working in a children’s hospital in benghazi for injecting 426 libyan children with hiv contaminated blood.
the controversy in the case, trials, and negotiations continued for eight years and the tragedy ended after eight years with a settlement that resulted in the release of the six defendants despite the fair libyan judiciary rulings sentenced to death all of them and it was said at the time that the release took place as a result of strong pressures from the european union.
the file was closed for fifteen years after european countries donated nearly $600 million to the families of the victims’ children.
the whole world was stirred at the time for the absurdity of the accusation and everyone questioned the interest or goal of the bulgarian nurses and the palestinian doctor in injecting innocent children with contaminated blood but neither the libyan judiciary nor the government of dictator gaddafi was able to come up with any justification, even half logical for the intentions of the accused.
after the collapse of gaddafi’s rule, shukri ghanem, who was the head of the libyan government from 2003 to 2006, mentioned in diaries found in 2012 the role of two libyan intelligence agents in injecting children with contaminated blood and that the head of libyan military intelligence, abdullah al-senussi, told him during his interrogation before the investigation committee, that he and musa koussa, the head of the libyan intelligence at the time obtained 31 small bottles containing the virus, and that al-senussi and kousa injected the children with the virus.
what has been mentioned in ghanem’s memoirs prompted the five nurses to demand huge compensation from the libyan government, as a result of being imprisoned, raped, and tortured for eight years, and it is not believed that they got anything!
months and years passed, and many things changed. recently, the former minister of foreign affairs of qatar, hamad bin jassim, came out to us, in an interview with ammar taqi, presenter of the “black box” program, with an exciting and unprecedented statement and closer to acceptance than all the previous stories on the release of the four bulgarian nurses, and the palestinian doctor.
the talk of bin jassim, and what i learned from my readings in the case showed that cécilia, the wife of french president sarkozy, intervened with gaddafi to release the six prisoners, so he asked that her husband’s government pay an amount of 480 million euros, or 600 million dollars in compensation to the families of children infected with aids, to release the prisoners, but sarkozy refused to respond to the request, for known reasons, so qatar was contacted to mediate in the case.
in the interview, bin jassim stated that the libyan officials claimed that they only wanted them to show a check of the amount to gaddafi so that the six prisoners would be released, and then they would return the check to qatar after 72 hours.
bin jassim says that he believed that promise, and issued the check, so the nurses and the doctor were released, but the check remained in libya and was paid in full after 72 hours, and all of this happened and bin jassim was on vacation in cannes.
in the interview, bin jassim did not hesitate to admit that the libyan side had deceived the qataris by cashing the check. in order to mitigate the amount of naïvety in this story, which is often true, and to reduce the size of the loss or scandal, bin jassim mentioned that the uae was also subjected to a similar deception, with a similar amount and from libya as well.
this is how things are managed in some countries and then we come and complain about the effects of colonialism and zionism.