This is the second segment in a three-part series recalling different facets of the Bulgarian crisis back in 2007. Focus shall now be placed upon the claims and the accusations, the evidence and the circumstances surrounding the controversy. In doing so the intent is to demonstrate the innocence of the previously detained medics through this re-examination.

Firstly we shall look upon the nature and the timing of Libya’s accusations levelled against the five Bulgarian nurses, and Palestinian doctor. The medics were not the first to be accused of deliberately infecting over four hundred children. Such dubious honour was reserved for the Israeli Mossad and American CIA jointly, both secret service outfits. It was only subsequently that the focus was brought upon the medics.

Secondly, dubious is the Libyan authorities’ claim that the Palestinian doctor was responsible for masterminding the infections. It would have been extremely unlikely for a Palestinian to work with Israeli secret services to pull off such a stunt.

What was the motive? The Libyan authorities claimed that the children were deliberately infected in an experiment to find a cure for AIDS… In a country where there is no shortage of children suffering from AIDS.

Thirdly the Authorities claimed that the Palestinian doctor had not only masterminded the plot but had also succeeded in enlisting at least five Bulgarian nurses in assisting him in carrying out the plot.

Let us pause here for a moment and reflect upon this point. Not only was this Palestinian doctor able to mastermind a plot to infect children with HIV, for the Israeli Mossad, in order to try to find a cure for AIDS, but he apparently managed to achieve a 100% enlistment success rate with the Bulgarian nurses, never mind that it went completely against the training and instincts of each one of them.

Ok… so perhaps the Palestinian doctor duped the nurses into assisting him unknowingly… and yet not a single such accusation was levelled against him by his fellow detainees. And then there is the small matter of not a single other Bulgarian nurse coming forward with claims of being approached by the doctor. Startling indeed.

Fourthly the Authorities claimed to have found bags of HIV-infected blood in the apartments of the medics. Damning evidence indeed except for the small detail that the HIV virus can only last several hours outside a host body, and this only within laboratory conditions. Therefore there was practically no point in collecting infected blood from the hospital for use later in transfusions.

As if this article of evidence weren’t shot full of holes already, on two separate occasions international scientists and scientific bodies had testified or published findings indicating that the infections were not only far more likely due to poor hygiene and the reuse of syringes at the Benghazi hospital, but the the strains of HIV within the infected children concerned suggested that it had been contracted before the Bulgarians started working there. Such evidence was conveniently barred from subsequent appeals.

It would be a little easier to understand this tangle if one were to consider that Benghazi has historically been the venue for a number of anti-regime uprisings. Perhaps the Libyan authorities genuinely felt that the mass infections were too much of a coincidence… but within the context of relative ostracization from the Libyan state in terms of public spending, as would be the likely result of needing to suppress uprisings within the region, spending in healthcare would also have had to have been hit badly.

Also, within this volatile region over four hundred families were clamouring for the blood of the perpetrators who had terminally sickened their sons and daughters. Hence it is not beyond speculation that Libya needed somebody to take the fall and the implication of a Palestinian doctor and Bulgarian nurses, gaining confessions through duress, might have been an attempt to do so. They were to be sacrifices to be made in exchange for the relative satisfaction of the Benghazi population.

Fortunately history decided otherwise.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 at 11:59 pm and is filed under Foreign Affairs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.