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Libya 'accepted blood money'
25/07/2007 17:02 - (SA)
Paris - Many European papers slammed EU negotiators on Wednesday for folding to "blackmail" and paying "blood money" for Libya's release of six foreign medics, while others hailed France's intervention especially as an "unprecedented success".
In the Netherlands, NRC Handelsblad said the release of the medics on Tuesday after more than eight years in a Libyan jail was "a happy ending, but not that happy".
"Let's hope the European Union will remember ... that Libya is guilty of blackmail, of taking hostages and of accepting blood money," the paper said.
Danish daily Berlingske Tidene meanwhile charged the EU with "compensating" Libyan leader Moamer Gaddafi for his crimes.
"Crime always pays, at least if your name is Moamer Gaddafi and you are the absolute ruler of a country with oil ... and with a potentially very promising market on the borders of the EU," it said.
"Libya is today being compensated for having destroyed nine years of the lives of six innocent people," Czech daily Dnes chimed in.
The five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor had been given death sentences commuted to life imprisonment for allegedly infecting 438 children with HIV-tainted blood in a Libyan hospital.
'Expensive freedom'
The medics, who have always denied the charges and say their confessions were extracted under torture, were flown to Bulgaria on Tuesday under a deal with the European Union and with the intervention of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Cecilia.
Portuguese daily Diario de Noticias lamented on Wednesday that the financial conditions behind the deal were "unclear".
Sarkozy claimed Europe had not paid "the slightest financial compensation" for the release, but others said both Paris and Brussels had contributed to the deal's bottom line.
Austrian daily Kurier spoke of "expensive freedom" for the medics, saying their release had led to "joy in Sofia, grins in Tripoli".
Cecilia Sarkozy accompanied EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner to Tripoli on Sunday to push for the medics' release and brought the six to Sofia in a French government jet.
Spain's largest daily however hailed the French president's wife with the headline: "Cecilia Sarkozy, mission accomplished".
A 'personal cause'
The Bulgarian media had nothing but praise for the French presidential couple and Ferrero-Waldner for brokering the medics' return.
"France's first lady Cecilia is definitely the French woman who will remain in Bulgarian history," the Trud daily wrote in a full-page profile of the first lady.
"Ferrero-Waldner, the woman armed with a broad, sincere and disarming smile, took the fate of the medics as her personal cause," a similar profile of the EU official stated.
Leftist daily Sega meanwhile said "Sarkozy gave it his all and won," claiming the deal was an "unprecedented success for the new French president."
- AFP
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