July 24, 2007 Libya extradits all six Bulgarians detained on charges for infecting hundreds of children with AIDS.
Nurses Christiana Valcheva, Nasya Nenova, Valentina Siropulo, Valya Chervenyashka and Snezhana Dimitrova, together with Christiana's husband Dr. Zdravko Georgiev and Palestinian medical student Ashraf al-Hajjuj, were arrested in Benghazi on February 9, 1999 and remained in Libyan prisons a total of 2,755 days. They were accused in 2000 of deliberately causing an AIDS epidemic in Benghazi to destabilize the Jamahiriya.
Two more Bulgarian citizens - Emanuela Koleva and Smilyan Tachev - were brought to the trial in absentia, accused together with the main group of defendants of violating Libya's moral norms and currency laws. In 2002, the medics were acquitted on the charge of conspiracy against the state, but an intermediate instance preserved and continued the case on the remaining charges - intent, poisoning, adultery, alcohol use, illegal currency transfers.
On May 6, 2004, the nurses and Ashraf were sentenced to death by firing squad. Zdravko Georgiev was convicted only on the lighter charges, as were Koleva and Tachev, who had left Libya before the start of the trial. In 2005, Libya's Supreme Court overturned the death sentences and remanded the case. In 2006, the sentences were reconfirmed by the Court of Appeal, and on July 11, 2007 - finally confirmed by the Supreme Court.
On July 17, 2007, the Bulgarians' death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment by the High Judicial Council of Libya. On July 24 this year Valcheva, Nenova, Siropulo, Chervenyashka, Dimitrova, Georgiev and Hadjuj returned on a special flight to Sofia airport after the negotiations for their release, which lasted more than eight years, ended with the mediation of the EU and France.