There was relief for five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor when death sentences on them were commuted to life in prison by the Libyan appeal court yesterday. Bulgaria's foreign minister Ivailo Kalfin said negotiations on the transfer of the six prisoners to Sofia would begin today.
They were accused of intentionally starting an HIV epidemic at a hospital in Benghazi at which 438 children were infected. Denying the charges, they say confessions were extracted under torture so as to provide scapegoats for the dilapidated Libyan health service and that the infection started before they arrived in 1999.
The complex agreement securing their release was worked out following Bulgaria's recent accession to the European Union, using the EU's leverage and networks to find a solution. A number of foundations offered over €400 million for channelling to the families involved, including the 56 whose children have died so far. This has allowed the families to tell the appeal court they will grant mercy to those accused, whom they have said are trying to undermine Libya and the Muslim world.
In so doing they should get Libyan leader Moammar Ghadaffi off an embarrassing hook on which he has been impaled for several years after agreeing to abandon his nuclear weapons programme in 2003. This issue has kept him isolated in Europe since then.
Yesterday's agreement means he will still be able to deny responsibility at domestic level for the health scandal, as the convictions for a conspiracy stand.
We are left with the scarifying picture of how blood transfusions for these children in Benghazi became contaminated with HIV/Aids, probably because of poor hygiene in the hospital. Culpability for this fact became bound up with a public taboo on admitting there could be a domestic source for the disease; hence the search for scapegoats among these Bulgarian nurses. Many health administrations in Libya and other North African states remain unwilling to accept responsibility for the spread of HIV/Aids or to come to terms with the extent of the disease among their populations.
Gradually this is changing, as it is elsewhere in Africa. A great deal depends on honest debate and open accountability in their health systems. In turn this exposes political leaders to public responsibility.
The bizarre efforts of the Libyan authorities to avoid that will be difficult to replicate elsewhere - not least because medical personnel will be highly reluctant to seek work in countries where they could be put through such an appalling experience.