You're listening to the witness podcast from the BBC World Service with me,

Dina Newman, history as told by the people who were there. Today we are going back to

Libya in February 1999 when a group of Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were secretly

detained by the Libyan police.

By the 23rd of that month, Bulgarian nurse Vallechervignashka had been in a trippily jail for two weeks.

That day she was blindfolded and driven to an unknown destination where she learned

for the first time why she was being detained.

I heard the investigator's voice.

You were the one who spread HIV. It was you and I said no I didn't.

Then they said so you know who did it. Tell us the name.

I said I don't know any names and it wasn't me. At that moment they said,

now we are going to switch on the current.

They attach two cables to my hands and tortured me with electricity.

I don't know how strong the current was, but my heart stopped twice.

Valle was accused of spreading HIV in Benghazi Children's Hospital where she worked.

This interrogation session carried on for four days, but whenever my heart stopped,

they would kick me in the chest and pour water on me to make me regain consciousness.

Valle

Jervinashka comes from a small town in northwestern Bulgaria.

After the collapse of communism in the early 90s, she, like many East Europeans, found it hard to make ends meet. In 1998, she signed a contract

to work as a nurse at a children's hospital in Libya to pay for her two daughters to go to university. But when she arrived in Benghazi, she wasn't impressed with her place of work.

The hospital in Benghazi was old. There were no bedsheets. Most of the staff were Libyans, but there were also

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