Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin says that to the best of his knowledge, President Georgi Purvanov’s pardon of the six medics sentenced to life imprisonment for deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children is legally sound.

At a Cabinet meeting on July 26, Kalfin confirmed that on July 25 a formal letter of protest was received from Libya about the pardon. The letter asked that the pardon be withdrawn.

The medics were transferred from Libya to Bulgaria on July 24 after their death sentences were commuted to life sentences, and after Bulgaria invoked a 1980s bilateral agreement on convict exchanges. Less than an hour after they arrived, Purvanov issued a decree pardoning them.

Kalfin said Bulgaria would send a formal note in reply to Libya. “The Libyan foreign ministry thinks that by pardoning the Bulgarian medics and Palestinian doctor, we have breached the bilateral agreement. We have another interpretation,” Kalfin said. The reply would say that Bulgaria had not breached any agreement between the two states. “I can’t comment a on a presidential decree but as far as I am informed it is legally sound,” Kalfin said.

At the Cabinet meeting, it was decided that each of the medics would receive one-time financial aid of 10 000 leva. The Cabinet is considering how to deal with the medics’ medical insurance, which they have not paid for the past eight years.