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Quiet Pressure from Berlin

How EU and German Diplomacy Helped Save Bulgarian Nurses

The legal drama over five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor -- earlier condemned to death in Libya for supposedly infecting hundreds of children with AIDS -- could be nearing its end. After months of tough negotiations, a diplomatic offensive by the German government and the EU has led to a breakthrough.

Decisions of national and occasionally international importance in Libya are often made in a simple tent. The structure made of camel hair and synthetic fabrics on a military base in Tripoli is used by Moammar Gadhafi, Libya's most powerful man, to receive guests of what he likes to call the "state of the masses." Hosting them in the style of a desert nomad, the 64-year-old leader then decides the fate of his people on top of thick carpets over a glass of tea.

A week ago Friday, the country’s “highest skillful leader” -- as Libya’s state-controlled television calls Gadhafi -- came to a conclusion with wide-ranging implications after long deliberations.

Close advisors including members of Libya’s Revolutionary Council and Gadhafi’s second-eldest son Saif al-Islam urged the "Brother Leader" to commute the death sentences of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor. According to a court’s verdict, the healthcare workers supposedly infected 426 Libyan children with AIDS on purpose. Fifty-six of the victims have already died.

“Brothers, I cannot ignore your arguments,” Gadhafi eventually told his followers. “You have convinced me. Executing the nurses would be just like the execution of the children.” Shortly thereafter, Libya's High Judicial Council, a type of political supervisory committee headed by the country’s justice minister, commuted the death sentences to life in prison.

Paving Way for Diplomatic Solution

The decision by Libya’s leader seemingly paves the way for a diplomatic solution to the unfortunate case. Not only has a crisis task force in Bulgaria been working for the nurses' freedom, but so too have high-ranking negotiators from the European Union and Germany. And the deal that could soon lead to the release of the Bulgarians is a textbook example of effective European diplomacy.

It was no coincidence that progress towards a resolution happened during the German EU presidency in the first half of this year. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier made it a priority at the beginning of 2007 after a short trip to Sofia. Although he had gone only to celebrate Bulgaria’s accession to the European Union, his hosts promptly put the fate of the nurses on the agenda. As soon as the foreign minister and his delegation landed, they received red ribbons -- symbols of solidarity with those imprisoned in Tripoli -- for their lapels. Sofia hoped that the EU during Germany’s presidency could succeed where the small Balkan country had failed.

And so began a negotiating marathon lasting months that would eventually culminate in the families of the children infected with AIDS agreeing to forgo further legal action against the Bulgarian nurses. After the necessary documents were flown from the Libyan port city Benghazi to the capital, the families each received a check for $1 million (€724,000) immediately redeemable at the Libyan national bank.

The release of the Bulgarians -- Sofia has already put in a request for their extradition -- would bring a politically motivated game full of intrigue to a close. It all started nine years ago following the reporting of a scandal involving AIDS infections in the children’s hospital in Benghazi by the magazine La in November 1998. The plight of the affected families shocked and outraged the normally quiet desert country.

The story also detailed the horrendous hygienic standards at the clinic -- contradicting the state’s propaganda about the utopia that Libya supposedly is. That quickly caused the journalists to become the first victims of their own scoop, as the magazine was, perhaps unsurprisingly, forced to close.

It remains unclear why only the Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor were charged, when originally Filipino, Polish and Hungarian clinic workers were also initially blamed for the infections. But the legal investigation in the scandal would soon take as many bizarre turns as the scatterbrained policies of the highly unpredictable Gadhafi.

For decades, he pursued an anti-Western course that was often backed up with support for terrorism. His regime is blamed for an attack on the West Berlin night club La Belle in 1986 and the downing of a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. And after trying in vain to forge pan-Arabism for years, Gadhafi suddenly determined he really should instead be pushing for African unity in an attempt to free the continent from its oppressors and exploiters.

A Show Trial

After the AIDS scandal in Benghazi became public, Gadhafi claimed at the time that Africa was the victim of a plot hatched by Zionists and the West. At first, the Bulgarians were accused of infecting their young patients on orders from the CIA and the Israeli intelligence service Mossad. But such talk was quickly dropped after the United States surprisingly reconciled with Libya in 2002.

However, the legal proceedings remained a show trial. The defendants’ confessions were read in the courtroom, but their attorneys’ objection that they had been tortured wasn’t even mentioned. The defense also didn’t have access to important files and the court completely ignored a report by French virologist Luc Montagnier, who helped discover AIDS. But hope still remained that the regime in Tripoli would eventually allow a fair resolution to the case -- especially after Gadhafi’s son Saif al-Islam became personally involved in it.

The young man is considered the most likely candidate to eventually succeed his father and he has gained importance in the country as the head of a Gadhafi-supported foundation. He drew international attention in the summer of 2000 after he used the organization’s money to buy the freedom of captives held by the Filipino Muslim rebel group Abu Sayyaf. Among those freed was the German Wallert family and Steinmeier -- then chief of staff of the German Chancellery (Berlin's equivalent of the White House) -- was Berlin’s lead negotiator.

Since then, he has cultivated contact to the younger Gadhafi. Whenever Saif al-Islam came to Berlin, he was given VIP treatment. Picked up at the airport by Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, the BND, he was escorted to the Chancellery, where Steinmeier was sure to make time for his guest. The efforts at building trust would later prove extremely useful.

Steinmeier had already used his good connections in Tripoli to arrange compensation for the victims of the bombing of the Berlin discotheque “La Belle.” In that case, he did in discrete, behind-the-scenes diplomacy what would be unthinkable publicly: calculating the monetary worth of human lives.

Courting Gadhafi's Son

But the goodwill of Gadhafi’s son, who readily admits that “Libya was not innocent in the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic,” wasn’t enough to help the Bulgarian nurses. He could not prevent a court in Tripoli from condemning them to death in May 2004.

The country’s leading justice and intelligence officials see the plight of the nurses as a perfect opportunity to recoup the millions of dollars Libya has been compelled to pay for the victims of its state-backed terrorism.

Supposedly the hardliners had their leader’s backing until only very recently. Gadhafi was also hoping for a prisoner exchange. Several times he has publicly ruminated that the nurses and doctor could be freed following the release of the Libyan agent Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, who is imprisoned for life near Glasgow for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103.

Officially, however, the Libyan leader acted as if he wanted nothing to do with a deal. As Steinmeier traveled to Libya in June, his hosts recommended he not bring it up with Gadhafi -- to prevent the colonel’s sterling reputation from being soiled.

Steinmeier knew from personal experience just how quickly his diplomatic mission for the nurses could go awry. During a visit to Benghazi for an economic conference, Steinmeier wanted to visit the hospital that suffered the AIDS outbreak as a sign of goodwill. He brought a donation of €100,000 for the children -- but they had been removed from their beds in the clinic. There would be no photo op with the sick kids for the guest from Berlin.

But Steinmeier would eventually lay the foundation for a compromise with EU Foreign Affairs Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner. The Libyans were represented by Saif al-Islam, who was given the authority to negotiate on the government’s behalf. However, former premier Abdul Ati al-Obeidi, a representative of the old guard, accompanied him. The four agreed to terms spanning three pages during a visit by the Europeans on June 12. The EU committed to funding AIDS prevention measures in Libya and in return got concrete details of how the prisoners would be repatriated. The deal’s goal was to bring the Bulgarians back to Europe with “discretion and dignity.”