hospital rooms that the five nurses were serving. The research by the World Health Organization showed that the HIV infected children also had Hepatitis C, which was proof that the infection was intentional and malicious. However, co-infection with Hepatitis was emphasized as indicating poor hygiene and reuse of syringes by the WHO study authors themselves, as well as all of the other non-Libyan studies used by the defense, the opposite conclusion to this analysis by the court. The court also said that it was not willing to accept the fact that the five were tortured because another court has already waived this accusation, and found therefore that the defendants all confessed in full consciousness and without being subject to any violence or torture. Commutation to life sentence On 17 July 2007, Libya's High Judicial Council, its highest judicial body, announced that the sentences would be converted to life imprisonment. Earlier that day, Libya negotiated a $400 million settlement with the families of 426 HIV victims. The Judicial Council received authority to review the case after the Supreme Court upheld the death sentences one week prior to the commutation. The Judicial Council is controlled by the government and can commute sentences or grant pardons. Terms of release On 24 July 2007, the French President Nicolas Sarkozy officially announced that French and European representatives had obtained the extradition of the prisoners, including the Palestinian doctor, who had been granted Bulgarian citizenship a month earlier. They left Libya on a French government plane, with the EU's external affairs commissioner, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, and the then wife of the French President, Cécilia Sarkozy, who traveled twice to Libya. During his investiture speech as President beginning of May 2007, Sarkozy had alluded to the nurses, declaring: "France will be to the sides of the Libyan nurses detained since 8 years..." The six prisoners were released after extensive negotiations between the EU (including Bulgaria, and particularly France's President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife) and Libya. As a result of the resolution of the crisis, negotiations for further restoring Libya's ties to the EU are in progress. A 1985 prisoner-exchange agreement between Bulgaria and Libya was the legal instrument used for the transfer; technically Libya did not free the medics but rather allowed them to serve their sentences in Bulgaria. On landing in Sofia, however, they were pardoned by the Bulgarian President, Georgi Parvanov. The French President said