The Bulgaria State Prosecutor Boris Velchev said Thursday that the decision of Bulgarian President to pardon the six medics who had previously received death sentences in Tripoli is legal.

The six were convicted in Libya of deliberately infecting children with HIV and they spent eight years in Libyan custody, although they always maintained their innocence.

According to experts the AIDS outbreak at the Benghazi children's hospital had been caused by bad hygiene.

After their arrival in Sofia, Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov has pardoned the six medics.

Yesterday, the families of the children infected with the AIDS virus in a Libyan hospital have initiated a protest against the decision of Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov to pardon the six medics.
The association of the families has issued a statement faxed to the Associated Press, demanding the medic be re-arrested by Interpol.

Also, Bulgaria's Foreign Ministry said it had received a formal protest note on Wednesday in which Libya said it had not complied with a 1984 extradition treaty.

But Velchev said the decision is correct. "There is absolutely no obstacle whatsoever to the pardoning of the Bulgarian medics," Prosecutor General Boris Velchev said.

"When a person is transferred in his own country to serve the sentence imposed in another, it is the laws of the home country that are applied to him from then on," he added.

Meanwhile medical examinations of the six medics have been concluded at the military medical academy in Sofia.

They were suffering from "acute chronic distress" because of the enormous stress they had been under, hospital director Stoyan Tonev said, without giving further details.