Bulgarian Interior Minister, Tsvetan Tsvetanov, finally issued the long-awaited apology to Bulgarian doctors, saying he never intended to stir tensions between them and the police.

The apology came three months after the Minister's public reading in the Parliament of taped conversations between four doctors from the hospital in the central town of Gorna Oryahovitsa.

"I apologize to doctors in Bulgaria because we have been misunderstood. The declassifying of special surveillance devices (SRS) in this case had no intentions of stirring tensions. Bulgarians must respect physicians because they save human lives daily," Tsvetanov said during a visit to the central city of Veliko Tarnovo.

The Minister offered as an excuse for his actions public accusations coming from politicians against the reaction of law enforcement authorities in the case.

"At the time, it was decided that the declassification of the SRS recordings would not obstruct the investigation, but will give the public the opportunity to learn about the motives and the actions of the police and the prosecutor's office," Tsvetanov further explained.

The Minister did, however, point out doctors' mistakes must not be concealed by doctors, giving as example his own institution's "thorough probes and unwavering fight against cases of police brutality or crimes committed by Interior Ministry employees."

At the very end of November, the Bulgarian public was shocked and the Interior Ministry and the Doctors' Union were tangled in an embarrassing dispute over suspicions some obstetricians might have deliberately killed a baby.

Four doctors from a hospital of the central Bulgarian town of Gorna Oryahovitsa were arrested on November 30 on allegations they left a prematurely-born baby die without helping it. After the birth, the doctors allegedly told the 17-year-old mother the baby was still-born; however, an employee of the hospital saw the baby showing some movement.

The scandal grew out of proportion as the police released tapes obtained through special surveillance devices. The recordings were of 3 conversations between the hospital head and some of the delivering doctors, where they can be heard talking about the baby being born alive. The tapes stirred huge outrage, after Interior Minister, Tsvetan Tsvetanov, publically read them in the Parliament, over the cynical language of the doctors regarding the baby's fate and their awareness they could face charges for letting the fetus die.

The arrests caused the Bulgarian Doctors' Union and the medical community to rise up in protest against the "police state" measures.

According to Tsvetanov, the conversations show the baby was "deliberately murdered." He explained the tapes have been declassified and released in response to the negative public reaction to the arrests. It turned out that the police had been spying on the doctors over suspicions of financial crimes committed by the head of the Gorna Oryahovitsa hospital.

The doctors were released on December 2, 2010, as the prosecutors could not find definitive evidence of a crime.

Right before the Christmas Holidays, the expert opinion of coroners, who performed an autopsy of the baby, was revealed showing solid proofs that the baby was still-born. The coroners explained the baby's movement with spinal impulses after brain death occurred in the mother's womb

On December 22, the last work day of the Parliament, Tsvetanov was summoned there to provide explanations about the actions of the Interior Ministry in the case, but the Minister appeared in plenary hall only after 8 pm at which point there was no quorum for his hearing as most MPs had left.

In the beginning of February, the Bulgarian Prosecutor's Office announced they did not find any violations committed by Tsvetanov.

According to the Prosecutor, the information has been declassified legally with the monitoring prosecutor in the case making the decision it had to be made public to appease tensions in society.

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