US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was awarded Bulgaria's highest honour Wednesday for her role in obtaining the release a year ago of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor jailed in Libya.
At a ceremony in the Coat of Arms Hall of the Bulgarian president's compound, President Georgy Parvanov decorated Rice with the Stara Planina First Class Medal.
The US top diplomat had made an "outstanding contribution" to diplomatic efforts that led to the release of the six medics in July 2007, Parvanov said.
"This has been a clear case of international solidarity and we're deeply grateful" to all the allies involved, notably the European Union and the United States, the president said.
Rice, who also met with the medics at the ceremony, said she was "really very honoured and very moved to be granted this honour by Bulgaria."
"I'm glad and pleased to have played a role in the release of your medics and the Palestinian doctor," she said.
"I'm glad that they're now safe. It was indeed a terrible ordeal."
The five nurses and a doctor of Palestinian origin had spent eight and a half years in prison on charges of deliberately infecting more than 400 Libyan children with HIV-tainted blood in a hospital in the northeastern city of Benghazi. All six medics said they were innocent.
One of the nurses, 55-year-old Snezhana Dimitrova, told Rice: "I'm very happy that I am able to touch you. You are an extraordinary woman."
"I'm very happy to be able to shake your hand after all you've been through. It's good to have you back," Rice replied.
The doctor, 38-year-old Ashraf Juma Hajuj, also said he and the medics thanked Rice "from our heart".
"We lost actually our lives in the prison," Hajuj saud. "We were physically and psychologically destroyed. We were tortured."
Hajuj has filed a complaint against Libya with the UN Commission on Human Rights, claiming damages.
He and the other medics, who always maintained their innocence, said they were subjected to torture, including beatings, electric shocks, food and sleep deprivation, and even sexual abuse, in order to confess to their alleged crime.
Libya has not yet repealed the sentences or recognised the medics' innocence.
"We want the Libyan regime to admit our innocence. We want the Libyan regime to pay for our broken lives," Hajuj said.
"We lost our rights in Libya. We hope you will support us to regain our rights. We have a big trust in you and your administration."
Rice said during a visit to Europe that began in Prague on Tuesday that she had raised the case repeatedly with the Libyan foreign minister and worked closely on it with EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner, who was similarly decorated with the Stara Planina.
She also worked closely "with a number of other countries that had influence with Libya, and we sent private messages to Libya at lots of levels," she told reporters without elaborating.
Last October, French President Nicolas Sarkozy also received Bulgaria's Stara Planina medal.
Sarkozy's then wife, Cecilia, made two trips to Tripoli as the president's personal envoy to expedite the medics' release.
And it was then French first lady and Ferrero-Waldner who escorted the medics home when they were freed on July 24.
During her brief stop in the Bulgarian capital, Rice also met with Foreign Minister Ivaylo Kalfin and Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev.
After receiving the medal, Rice left for the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, the third and last scheduled stop on her European tour.
