CIA official held 'secret meeting' with Gaddafi

Agencies - 20 November 2005 - TRIPOLI - Deputy Director of CIA, Vice-Admiral Albert M. Calland III, visited Tripoli this month for secret meetings with top Lybian officials including Muammar Gaddafi.

The purpose of the visit was to discuss expanding Lybia's role in fighting terrorism. The Americans also met with Gaddafi's Intelligence Aid, Abdulla Sanusi, who had earlier been convicted in absentia for terrorist activities. Calland was accompanied by a small delegation of CIA officials, reliable sources confirmed.

Sanusi is wanted in France for the bombing of a civilian jetliner over Africa in 1989 that killed 170 people. Sanusi was convicted in absentia and is barred from travelling to many European countries. He is also prohibited from entering the United States, a senior State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told an American daily.

Sources described the talks between Libyan officials and Calland as positive and fruitful. Gaddafi reportedly told Calland that the Bush administration erred in invading Iraq and instead it needed to focus its attention on Al Qaeda and affiliated organizations. Gaddafi also offered Libya's full assistance to that project, the sources said.

However, a senior U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said, "One of the most effective tools in the war on terrorism is our relationships with our allies, even nontraditional ones. Libya, geographically, is in an important area for the intelligence community."

Calland's trip marks a significant advance in the transformation of relations between the United States and Libya, which is still listed officially as a "state sponsor of terrorism" by the State Department.

It also illustrates the murky alliances the Bush administration has forged in fighting terrorism. Along with its ties to Libya, the CIA has established close counter-terrorism partnerships with Uzbekistan, Egypt, Sudan and a number of other countries that the administration has simultaneously accused of widespread human rights abuses.

In April, the CIA sent a plane to Khartoum to bring Maj. Gen. Salah Abdallah Gosh, Sudan's intelligence chief, to the U.S. for meetings at the agency's headquarters. Sudan, accused by the Bush administration of conducting genocide in the Darfur region, has rounded up extremist suspects for questioning by the CIA and detained foreign militants transiting through the country on their way to join Iraqi insurgents. - khaleejtimes

Time ebbing for 6 foreigners in Libya AIDS case

SOFIA In 1998, at a time when her country was mired in hyperinflation, Valya Chervenyashka left her rural Bulgarian village and went to work as a nurse in Benghazi, Libya, for $250 a month, to pay for her daughters' college education.

Today, Chervenyashka and four other Bulgarian nurses, as well as a Palestinian doctor, are under death sentence in a Libyan jail and facing a firing squad, accused of intentionally infecting more than 400 hospitalized Libyan children with the AIDS virus - in order, according to the initial indictment, to undermine Libyan state security.

They were also charged with working for Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service.

Although the motive of subversion has since been dropped, the death sentence stands. The nurses' final appeal is scheduled to be heard by the Libyan Supreme Court on Nov. 15. With that date approaching, President Georgi Parvanov of Bulgaria plans to raise the case at a meeting with President George W. Bush in Washington on Monday.

International experts, including Dr. Luc Montagnier, the eminent discoverer of the AIDS virus, have traveled to Libya to study the situation and have testified that the children were infected as a result of poor sanitary practices at the Al Fateh hospital in Benghazi. The nurses have testified that they were tortured in the months after their arrest.

"Nurses from little towns in Bulgaria acting as agents of Mossad?" said Antoanetta Ouzounova, one of Chervenyashka's daughters, now 28. "It all sounds funny and absurd until you realize your mother could die for it."

For seven years the nurses' plight has simmered on the back burner of international politics, especially since Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan president, renounced terrorism and nuclear weapons in 2003. Last year, even as Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. secretary of state, and Romano Prodi, then head of the European Commission, were protesting the case in meetings, the commission invited Qaddafi to Brussels for lunch, and the United States lifted trade sanctions. But now, with time running out, the simmering case may well come to boil, threatening Qaddafi's rehabilitation.

Negotiations to secure the nurses' release are "not moving well," Ivailo Kalfin, Bulgaria's foreign minister, said in a recent interview here.

Libyan officials have suggested that the Bulgarians pay $10 million in compensation for each of the 420 children allegedly infected with AIDS, according to Bulgarian and EU diplomats. The Europeans have countered with offers of HIV treatment and humanitarian help.

"These women are hostages," said Solomon Passy, head of the Bulgarian National Assembly's Committee on Foreign Policy.

Last summer, the EU's commissioner for external relations, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, visited the Benghazi hospital where the nurses had worked.

"The EU is leaving no stone unturned to try to secure the release of the Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian medic," said Emma Udwin, the commissioner's spokeswoman, while declining to go into specifics.

If the nurses had been Italian or British or American, diplomats say, the case would have provoked a major international protest, with posters and yellow ribbons demanding their release. But here in Sofia, a lazy city of trendy cafés and decaying Communist monuments, there is only muted outrage.

Bulgaria is trying not to rock the boat so as to be admitted to the EU as planned in 2007; it is accustomed to second-class diplomatic status.

Kalfin, the foreign minister, said with a shrug: "It is one thing when Britain raises an issue; it is another when Bulgaria raises it."

In hopes of brokering a deal, the European Union has sent diplomats and medical teams to Libya to study and consult on the country's HIV/AIDS problem. It has flown dozens of children from Libya to Europe for medical treatment and held training sessions for doctors in Libya. Bulgaria recently agreed to send Libya 20 of the 50 pieces of medical equipment it had requested, and even offered to restructure the $27 million in Libyan debt it holds.

But Libya has countered that Bulgaria should also negotiate a payment of "blood money" to the families of the infected children, saying that the families might then express forgiveness toward the nurses and ask for dismissal of the court case, a procedure permitted under Islamic law.

The Libyan figure of $10 million for each child draws parallels to the $10 million Libya agreed to pay each of the families of the 270 people killed in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 by its agents over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. For Bulgaria, it would amount to 25 percent of its gross domestic product. The Bulgarian government has rejected the idea. It rejects the concept of "blood money," Kalfin said. "Second, there's no way to compare this to Lockerbie."

Nonetheless, a senior EU diplomat said there had been "underground meetings" about a payment.

There is little doubt that in the late 1990s, Libya was coming to grips with a serious HIV/AIDS outbreak. There is also no evidence that it was caused by the five Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor - although they may have inadvertently spread the virus when treating children with blood or syringes provided by the hospital. A team of World Health Organization doctors dispatched to study HIV in Libya in late 1998 concluded that there were "multiple sources of infection." Their internal report was never released but was provided to the International Herald Tribune by an official familiar with the case.

In Benghazi, the report said, "nosocomial transmission" - accidental spread during medical procedures - was "mainly responsible for the current epidemic." It added that sterile supplies and better equipment were needed.

Three years later, Montagnier was hired by Qaddafi's son as an independent expert to study the situation at Al Fateh Hospital.

"Some of the children were infected before the Bulgarian nurses even arrived, and others after they left," said Montagnier said in a telephone interview, recalling his 2001 visit.

He said that most of the children were also infected with various subtypes of hepatitis C, which can be transmitted to children only by injection. This, he said, clearly demonstrated that "there were many errors in hygiene in this hospital at the time."

In a handwritten 2003 declaration to the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry, one nurse, Snezhana Dimitrova, described torture that had included electric shocks and beatings. "They tied my hands behind my back," she wrote. "Then they hung me from a door. It feels like they are stretching you from all sides. My torso was twisted and my shoulders were dislocated from their joints from time to time. The pain cannot be described. The translator was shouting, 'Confess or you will die here."'

In February 2000, a year after their arrest, charges were filed against the nurses - Chervenyashka; Dimitrova; Kristiana Valcheva; Nasya Nenova; and Valentina Siropulo - and the doctor, Ashraf Ahmad Jum'a. After a quiet trial in May 2004, the five nurses and the Palestinian doctor were sentenced to death by firing squad.

The Libyan police officers accused by the nurses of torture were acquitted.

Experts on all sides express skepticism that the conviction will be overturned or that the nurses will be released in November, either by the court or by Qaddafi himself, because such a reversal would fly in the face of overwhelming public opinion in Libya. Complicating matters, the experts say, is the fact that the Qaddafi regime decided early on to blame the foreign nurses for HIV rather than acknowledging a medically embarrassing and politically dangerous situation.

"They've fingered the Bulgarians as murderers and they cannot step back," Passy said. Justice, he said, is in the hands of Qaddafi, "and he can free the nurses, but he will have to pay a high political price."

Matthew Brunwasser contributed reporting for this article. - iht.com

Libya quashes death sentences in AIDS trial

TRIPOLI (AFP) Dec 25, 2005 - Libya's supreme court on Sunday ordered a retrial for five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor sentenced to death for their alleged role in infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV.

The decision overturned death sentences that would have been carried out by firing squad and gave the nurses and their supporters new hopes that after seven years behind bars they could one day be released.

"The court has accepted the appeal of the Bulgarian nurses and ordered that a new trial will take place at the criminal court of Benghazi," the town in northern Libya where the infections took place, court President Ali al-Alus said.

Libyan Justice Minister Ali Hasnawi told AFP the new trial would be held "in one month" and there would be "new judges".

The ruling had been postponed until January 31 but Libya was keen to speed up the process as it bids to return to the international fold following leader Moamer Kadhafi's renouncement of weapons of mass destruction two years ago. The move was quickly welcomed by Bulgaria, the United States and the Council of Europe.

"The unfair death sentences were reversed... We hope that the swiftness and the effectiveness demonstrated by the Libyan court in the past days will help to solve the case as soon as possible," Bulgarian President Georgy Parvanov said.

US State Department spokesman Justin Higgins said the international community had been working with Libya to find an "overall solution". "We believe a way should be found to allow the medics to return to their home," he said.

In Strasbourg, Council of Europe Secretary General Terry Davis said: "I hope that the new trial will begin soon and that it will comply with the internationally recognised standards of fairness and due process."

The hearing Sunday on the admissibility of the nurses' appeal lasted barely an hour. The accused were not present in court. The families of the children protested the decision outside the court, shouting: "This is injustice, this is injustice". They later took their protest to the centre of Tripoli, brandishing pictures of their dead children.

The nurses stand accused of transfusing HIV-contaminated blood into 426 children at a Benghazi hospital on Libya's Mediterranean coast. Around 50 of them have since died of AIDS. "We are going to ask for their release next month at the Benghazi court. Perhaps the court will agree to our demand," said defence lawyer Othman al-Bizanti.

It remains unclear what the prospects are for the nurses' eventual release, after the surprise announcement just days earlier by Bulgaria that it was creating a fund for AIDS-infected children in Libya.

Libyan media reports have suggested that the families of the children have agreed to drop their demands for the nurses to receive the death penalty in exchange for compensation. Unconfirmed reports have also suggested the nurses could even be freed once this is agreed.

Parvanov said last week that there was "light at the end of the tunnel but a release would "have a very high price". He did not mention the nature of this price.

After Bulgaria announced it would set up the fund, a Libyan official said there were "indications of a possibility of concluding this matter in a positive way".

The fund, whose size has not been specified but aims to aid the families of the victims, was agreed to in talks last week in Tripoli which also included representatives of the European Union, the United States and Britain.

However the lawyer for the victims' families, Abdallah al-Moghrabi said: "It is seven years that we are waiting for justice to be done. It is a shame we have still obtained nothing and the decision has been made at the families' expense."

All six defendants pleaded not guilty ahead of their conviction in May 2004. Two of the nurses and the doctor said during the trial that they were tortured into confessing.

The Benghazi court that first condemned the medics had rejected testimony from foreign experts that the epidemic was due to a lack of hygiene. Instead the court based its verdict on a report by Libyan experts that blamed the foreign health workers. - via terradaily

Parents of Libyan AIDS-infected children demand 10 million dollars

SOFIA (AFP) Dec 28, 2005 - The families of hundreds of Libyan children infected with the AIDS virus are demanding 10 million dollars for each child in compensation, Bulgarian television reported Wednesday.

The sum matches the compensation paid by Libya to families of the 270 victims of the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am Am flight over Locherbie in Scotland.

Idriss Lagha, a lawyer for the families, told Bulgarian reporters that five Bulgarian nurses accused of deliberately infecting 426 children with the AIDS virus could have their sentences shortened if the money were paid.

The five nurses and a Palestinian doctor have been in jail for seven years and have been condemned to death for deliberately inoculating the children, 51 of whom have died, with infected vaccine. But on Sunday the Libyan supreme court overturned the conviction and ordered a retrial.

Lagha said that if the families were compensated they could ask for lighter sentences which might permit the nurses to serve their time in Bulgarian prisons.

Last week the two countries said they had set up a fund to help Libya fight AIDS and to help the families of ill and dead children with the cooperation of Britain, the European Union and the United States.

Bulgaria says its nurses are innocent and will not hear talk of compensation, but will help in humanitarin action against AIDS in Libya. - via terradaily.com

Libya sees swift removal from US terror list

LONDON (Reuters) - Libya expects the United States will soon remove it from its list of state sponsors of terror following the return to Libyan oilfields of the Oasis Group of U.S. companies, a top Libyan oil official said on Wednesday.

He said he was "positive and confident" the former pariah state would be wiped from the list, with the expected backing of the Oasis Group, comprising ConocoPhillips, Marathon and Amerada Hess. "I would expect logically they will be willing to put the right message across to the U.S. government to do something about it quickly," Tarek Hassan-Beck of Libya's National Oil Company told Reuters in a telephone interview.

An international lawyer who has worked on cases involving Libya said he believed companies might be reluctant to pour new capital into the oil producer unless they had assurances Washington would restore full ties.

"This is a high-risk strategy .... unless of course there were some understanding as to how long the existing sanctions would remain," said Timothy Scrantom of Meridian 361 International Law Group.

Libya's presence on the list bars it from receiving U.S. arms exports, controls sales of items with military and civilian uses, limits U.S. aid and requires Washington to vote against loans from international financial institutions.

A U.S. state department official declined comment and no one from the Oasis Group was immediately available. - news.yahoo.com