Intro Open Letter Final

The Honorable Mr. George Parvanov President for the Republic of Bulgaria Office of the President Sofia, Bulgaria Michael Kapoustin Citizen of Canada Inmate Sofia Central Penitentiary 10th Prisoners Group Sofia Bulgaria May 21st 2004 Mr. Parvanov, Enclosed is a copy of an “Open Letter” to the President of Libya. Many of the foreign prisoners are in solidarity with your citizens. Those of us concerned for their safe return to Bulgaria have signed next to our names, the others have been removed. We sincerely want to add our voices to the many already pleading for the safe return of these five Bulgarian women. Our personal circumstances make us not only to keenly aware but personally sensitive to their circumstances. So, without the benefit of diplomatic experience or any support from the prison I have done the best possible. The “Open Letter” is an attempt at collectively expressing the fundamental elements of every foreign prisoner’s thoughts. Possibly our circumstances as foreign prisoners will lend a greater credibility to our plea than to those coming from men who have never had to live through public humiliation in the mass media, public enmity and the inevitable lynch mobs that follow being convicted first in the press, then later by the court. Each of us, like your citizens, lives every day with the unanswered question of when he will be allowed to return home, either to a prison or deported at parole. I had no concept on how to organize this, and obviously I am not even sure if your offices or that of the Foreign Minister will undertake forwarding our letter. It would have been better to have worked together with the Ministry of Justice on such a letter. Picking the right words and collecting more signatures. Even requesting on our behalf that copies of this Open Letter be delivered by each of our departments of foreign affairs in Canada, the United States, Poland, Turkey and other nations represented at Sofia’s central prison. Again there is no one to talk to about such things. The result is that the two originals with signatures have been sent one to Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs the Honorable Bill Graham and the other to my father in Washington, D.C., USA. I was concerned to send the originals directly to your offices for fear of their being lost or somehow never reaching your offices.

I have arranged with my family to wait until June 8th 2004 to hear from me if the good offices of the President or Minister of Justice would like to engage themselves in helping with the improvements this letter needs. Otherwise, they will proceed to deliver one original copy to the Libyan government either directly or through the good offices of U.S. Senator Lugar and Secretary of State Mr. Collin Powell, my sister and father having contacts there. I recognize that what has been written by us could be greatly improved upon. But it is the best we could do. Will it help? I do not know. But it would have been ethically and morally wrong to remain silent. A prisoner speaking about morals and ethics is, on first blush, oxymoronic. Yet, there are many things to be learned from within a prison. What comes to mind first is the importance of examining every wrong act you have committed in life and not just the one placing you in prison. Innocent of one, you may well be guilty of many others. As well you learn that there is the need to forgive as well as to ask to be forgiven. And, of course there is the question of what a man should do at those times of his life when he must choose between a wrong and right, and between speaking up or remaining silent in the presence of an injustice or inhumanity. Prison will teach you that making such choices is not as simple as it appears because each such choice carries with it a number of possible consequences that are not always good. We have only to look at recent events in Iraq’s prison. There were a number of American witnesses to this torture, yet only one man chose to speak out. His was the right, but the more difficult choice. It would be wrong to remain silent now, and to simply do nothing only because you believe it to be futile and pointless is also equally as wrong. The right choice was to write this letter, sign it and send it. Sincerely, Michael Kapoustin

OPEN LETTER TO

THE HONORABLE LIBYAN PEOPLE AND THEIR PRESIDENT COLONEL M. GHADAFI A PLEA FOR CLEMENCY FOR THE BULGARIAN MEDICS IN LIBYA From

FOREIGN CITIZENS IMPRISONED BY BULGARIA Through

The Honorable President of the Republic of Bulgaria Mr. George Parvanov To the Honorable People of Libya and their President, We are Moslems, Christians and a Jew, foreign prisoners in the State of Bulgaria who plead for clemency and compassion for the five Bulgarian women and one Palestinian man convicted by a court of Libya. It is a difficult thing to ask for compassion when you know of the collective anguish, terrible loss and anger felt by the whole of the Libyan nation. The grief of the Libyan mothers and fathers of these nearly 400 children is impossible for us to contemplate, much less imagine. As fathers it is difficult to even speak about a child’s needless death as the conscious act of the five Bulgarian women who are themselves mothers and a Palestinian man who is a father. Our plea is possible only because we sincerely believe no human being could have intentionally committed such a horrible act, and so no human being is beyond compassion. No doubt Libya’s higher court will arrive at the final truth, but if the prior conviction and sentence of death is confirmed, then We plead the President show clemency by leaving the taking of human life to God’s divine Providence. We also plead that, once the procedures of Libyan law are completed, the President to then please allow for the speedy return of these five nurses to Bulgaria. To deprive someone for years of their liberty is punishment enough, but to deprive them of contact with their family and culture is needlessly cruel. Each foreign prisoner in Bulgaria personally knows the inhumanity and cruelly of being intentionally separated in a prison far from his family and people. Many of us have lost hope of seeing our children and wives. Prison is harsh enough without the extraordinary cruelty of a state also destroying a family. And, even though Bulgaria has affected such a punishment against us we in good conscious cannot wish this same inhumanity upon the Bulgarian citizens in Libya’s care. Each man who has signed this letter is convicted by a Bulgarian court of law. The Bulgarian State has no doubt of our guilt, even though some of us continue to protest to deaf ears that we are innocent. Still, no one is without sin and so all of us are repentant and accountable before the one God.

To the Bulgarian people we are criminals, and worse we are foreigners, and so many in Bulgaria will say we have no moral right to plead for understanding or compassion. Not for citizens of Bulgaria in a Libyan prison or for ourselves in Bulgaria. But who better in Bulgaria can understand the true value and need for human compassion than those foreign prisoners who fail to receive it from a nation angry at our very existence. To often men punish and humiliate each other in the name of justice, even kill each other. But no amount of torment, public humiliation or death will restore a lost life. It will never fill the gapping hole left in a parent’s soul, and can never satisfy the consuming fires of blind vengeance and rage that burn in a parent’s heart. Nothing, not a thousand cuts or a thousand deaths will end the sorrow and pain a mother and father feel at the death of a child. A part of each of us dies with them. A piece of our humanity disappears forever. The twin sins of hatred and cruelty are abhorrent to God for they diminish the dignity and humanity of man. They make victims of all of us. Salvation comes only with repentance from one side and forgiveness and understanding of the other. Only then are souls redeemed. Mr. President my words would ring empty if it were not for the fact that many of us here in Bulgaria’s prisons have suffered losses. Some of the men have lost children, others a parent. Children and parents we could not see before they died, and we will never saw again. Why? Because there are those in Bulgaria who hate us and have, in the name of justice, denied us the chance to return to our countries. We are not strangers to pain. But there is no good human purpose for inflicting such a punishment, not upon us and not upon these five women, citizens of Bulgaria in Libya. So, we the foreigners in Bulgaria’s prisons, Moslems, Christians and a Jew are joined together in a plea for the People of Libya and their President to show clemency and compassion towards the five Bulgarian women and one Palestinian man. No matter what the final sentence, please let them return home alive and well. The Word of God will not be served and the health and lives of children never restored by causing other families to be destroyed or to suffer a death. No honest person can take pleasure in another’s pain, even though they themselves have endured an even greater pain. Mr. President, God judges not only men but nations, and will favor the nations and the peoples that practice humanity and compassion over the nations that demand humanity and compassion for their citizens but at the same time mistreat and torment foreigners in their prisons. I did my best to write this letter for all of us and hope my words are neither to feeble or inappropriate. We are Bulgaria’s prisoners, but we sincerely and honestly plead for the people of Libya to show clemency towards the convicted Bulgarian and Palestinian nurses. We beg the Libyan people show their compassion by returning each home to their country and more importantly near their families. Each of us has signed next to his name, Respectfully, Signed May 21st, 2004 Sofia Central Penitentiary Sofia, Bulgaria