The five Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor, who spent over eight years in Libyan prison over accusations of deliberately infecting more than 400 children with HIV, are to mark Thursday the first anniversary since their release.

Kristiyana Valcheva, Nasya Nenova, Valentina Siropulo, Valya Chervenyashka, Snezhana Dimitrova, Doctor Zdravko Georgiev and Ashraf Al-Hadjudj landed on Bulgarian soil by the aircraft of the French President Nicolas Sarkozy shortly before 10 a.m. on July 24 2007.

At the same time today, part of them are to stage a kind of a vigil before the building of the Council of Ministers in the hope of being accepted by Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev to ask him why the state did not kept all the promises it gave to the medics a year ago.

After that the Bulgarians will head to Saint Sofia church.

Relatives, Bulgarian media, President Parvanov, PM Sergey Stanishev, other high state officials and thousands of Sofia citizens were pleased to welcome the nurses and the two doctors at the Sofia Airport hours after their released was announced.

EU's External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the former French first lady Cecilia Sarkozy and Elysee Secretary General Claude GuГ©ant who led the last two-day tough talks with Libyan leader Muammar Quadaffi arrived to Bulgaria on board of the same plane.

The medics were imposed life imprisonment sentences and allowed to serve them in Bulgaria after Libya demanded stability in its relations with all EU member states. Nevertheless, less than an hour after the medics descended the plane, President Parvanov issued a special order with which he pardoned them.

The six medical staff, who have been imprisoned since 1999, have been convicted of deliberately infecting 460 children with HIV at the Benghazi hospital and were twice sentenced to death. At last, the Libyan authorities commuted the sentence to life imprisonment, a move many Europeans and Bulgarians believed was a prelude to transferring the medics to Bulgaria.

The medics, who said their confessions were made under duress, were the subject of a high-profile international lobbying campaign. International experts blamed the HIV infections on pre-existing hygiene problems at the hospital where the children contracted the virus.

The decision from the Libyan Supreme Judiciary Council came after families of the children infected with the HIV virus started to receive compensations. The families had said the same day that they dropped their demand for the death penalty. The same day, July 17 2007, Idris Lagha, the head of the Libyan-based Association for the Families of HIV-Infected Children, said that the victims' families had received cash compensation.

This was part of a deal organised by the Quaddafi Foundation, a charity which has been involved in mediating a resolution to the case. In return for the money, the relatives have signed a declaration handed over to the Supreme Judiciary Council, saying they no longer insist on the death penalty being carried out.

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