The New York Times - July 26, 2007
Matthew Brunwasser

"We are shocked both by freedom and all of the other things that have happened," one of the nurses, Kristiana Valcheva, said at a news conference. "We are still quite disoriented and confused. We were transferred from hell to heaven." The doctor, Ashraf al-Hazouz, said, "Now it's time to relax and think about our lives."

But Dr. Hazouz criticized the Arab world for failing to speak out against the treatment of the medical workers. "I'm really disappointed with the whole Arab world and how they have treated our case," said Dr. Hazouz, who was granted Bulgarian citizenship last month. "Only foreigners were accused in this case because they are Christians, and this is against our morals."

The three others who were freed at the same time did not attend the news conference -- the first public appearance by any of the six since they were released and flown to Sofia on a French government plane on Tuesday -- because they were reported to be not feeling well. The director of the military hospital where all six medical workers were examined after they arrived said there were no signs so far of serious health problems.

For the other nurse at the news conference, Nasya Nenova, the worst moment was in 1999, when she was told that she was accused of having infected more than 400 children with H.I.V. "If it wasn't me, they told me, I knew who did," she said. "And throughout all these difficult years I was asking myself, 'Why was it me that was chosen to be accused of this evil deed?' "

On Tuesday, Ms. Valcheva said, the nurses were awakened at 4 a.m. and told they had three hours to get ready to leave, "because the wife of the French president was going to take us home with a French airplane." C cilia Sarkozy, the wife of President Nicolas Sarkozy, had flown to Tripoli, Libya, to accompany the six medical workers to Bulgaria after joining the talks that led to the end of their ordeal. All six had been condemned to death.

In contrast to the apartment-like quarters in the prison where the women were kept, Dr. Hazouz said he was separated from them after the 2004 death sentence and confined in isolation in a six-foot-by-six-foot cell. Early on Tuesday, the director of the prison told him he was free to go to Bulgaria if he wanted. "I said, 'For sure,' " Dr. Hazouz recalled, in halting English. "I don't want to be here anymore in the Arab world."

President Sarkozy arrived in Tripoli on Wednesday, on the first state visit of a French head of state in Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi's Libya. French and Libyan officials signed agreements on the environment, migration, economic cooperation and Libya's cultural heritage. Among the agreements, officials said, was a memorandum of understanding for the installation of a nuclear reactor in Libya for the desalination of water, Reuters reported.

The nurses did not want to speak in detail about the torture they said they had suffered to force confessions. Several said they were denied visits by Bulgarian diplomats during the first months of their captivity, while their wounds were still visible. Ms. Nenova said that when she met a Bulgarian presidential envoy, Hristo Danov, in April 2000, "I managed to whisper into his ear what happened to me in the previous months."

In a handwritten declaration to the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry in 2003, Snezhana Dimitrova, a nurse who was not at the news conference, detailed her two months of torture after her arrest in February 1999. She recounted having her arms tied behind her back and being hung from a door by her arms. "Even when I wasn't on the door anymore but on the floor, I thought I had no arms," her statement said. "Tens of men's legs kicked me, then they made me stand up and started to slap me. Everything hurt." Ms. Dimitrova wrote that the interpreter was shouting, "Confess, or you will die here."

Asked if they were ready to testify in a Bulgarian court in a future case against her torturers, Ms. Valcheva said calmly, "Yes, we are ready."

But she said: "We should always forgive. Whether I will look for revenge, I don't know. There are so many things I have to think about. These individuals were serving a state. I think I could forgive them. They were not the main reason for everything bad happening to us."

Ariane Bernard contributed reporting from Paris.
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