BRUSSELS, Oct 10, 2007 (AFP) - The European Union should maintain its ties with Tripoli, one of five Bulgarian nurses imprisoned for eight years in Libya, said Wednesday.
"I believe relations must be maintained," Valentina Siropoulo told a press conference at the European parliament in Brussels.
"It is a matter of a political relationship, a matter of striking a balance, balancing pluses and minuses".
Siropoulo and the four other Bulgarian nurses were incarcerated along with a Palestinian doctor, in 1999 in Libya, where they were sentenced to death after being found guilty of infecting more than 400 children with HIV-tainted blood in a hospital in the northeastern city of Benghazi.
They always maintained their innocence and their case sparked an international outcry. International health experts blamed the AIDS epidemic on poor hospital hygiene.
They were freed in July after their sentences were commuted and following a trip to Libya by EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner and French first lady Cecilia Sarkozy.
They were invited to Brussels on the world day against the death penalty.
Siropoulo thanked the EU and European citizens. "What the EU has done for us was to make a miracle come true."
She said the nurses would not be seeking compensation for their ordeal.
"No compensation can make up for all the suffering we had there so no, we are not going to ask for any compensation from Libya.
"We could only accept material and moral support from people who understand us, and not from the ones who caused the suffering," she added.
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