TRIPOLI, Libya - The families of children infected with the AIDS virus in a Libyan hospital voiced outrage Wednesday at the pardon and release of six medics who were flown to Bulgaria a day earlier.
"We deeply condemn and are deeply disappointed at the absurdity and disrespect shown by the Bulgarian presidential pardon,'' the Libyan Association for the Families of HIV-Infected Children said in a statement faxed to The Associated Press.
The five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were flown to Bulgaria on Tuesday and immediately pardoned by Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov.
Their release was secured during a three-day trip to Libya by Cecilia Sarkozy, wife of the French president, and the European Union's commissioner for foreign affairs, Benita Ferrero-Waldner.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy was heading to Libya on Wednesday to renew France's relations with Libya.
The medics had twice been sentenced to death in Libya for allegedly infecting some 426 children in the coastal city of Benghazi in the late 1990s -- charges that were widely denounced abroad as false. Before their release, Libya had commuted their sentences to life in prison.
The Libyan families' statement called on the Interpol police force to arrest the medics again in Bulgaria, "so that they can spend the rest of their sentences in prison.''
The medics have long voiced their innocence and said their confessions in Libyan jails were extracted under torture.
