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Freed nurses seek legal action against `torturers'

Bulgarian medics freed by Libya after being held for more than eight years want legal action to be taken against the people they say tortured them while they were held in prison.

"We can forgive, but we cannot forget what has happened to us," Nasya Nenova, one of the six medics, told a news conference on Wednesday.

Kristiana Valcheva, Nasya Nenova and Ashraf al Hazouz said they were ready to testify in an investigation into 11 Libyan police officers, which Bulgaria started last January for alleged torture of the medics.

Libya had accused the six of deliberately infecting more than 400 Libyan children with HIV. Fifty of the children died. The medics, jailed since 1999, were initially sentenced to death, but later had their sentence commuted to life imprisonment. They denied the charge and said their confessions were extracted under torture.

Speaking on Wednesday at their first press conference after being extradited to Bulgaria on Tuesday on the basis of a bilateral prisoner exchange treaty, the medics said they could forgive those who tortured them but said they want them tried.

"They tortured us, they did not allow us to have a lawyer. It was only after 13 months that we could meet with our lawyer and try to whisper what they were doing to us," Kristiana Valcheva said.

The Libyans will be investigated for allegedly using coercion, torture and threats -- between February and May 1999 -- to extract false confessions from the medics.

There has been no indication Libya would allow the officers to travel to Bulgaria to take part in any trial.

The medics received an emotional welcome on Tuesday from family members, government officials and hundreds of ordinary Bulgarians. They were immediately granted a presidential pardon.

Sofia brushed aside protests from Tripoli yesterday over the pardons.

"There is absolutely no obstacle whatsoever to the pardoning of the Bulgarian medics," Prosecutor General Boris Velchev told the BGNES news agency.

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