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8/14/2019 Intro Open Letter Final

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The Honorable Mr. George Parvanov

President for the Republic of Bulgaria

Office of the President

Sofia, Bulgaria

Michael KapoustinCitizen 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 foreignprisoners 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 prisoners 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 foreignaffairs in Canada, the United States, Poland, Turkey and other nations represented at

Sofias 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 Canadas

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.


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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 Iraqs 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


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OPEN LETTERTO

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 BULGARIAThrough

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 childs 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 committedsuch a horrible act, and so no human being is beyond compassion.

No doubt Libyas 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 Gods 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 aprison 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 Libyas 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.


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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 parents soul, and can never satisfy the

consuming fires of blind vengeance and rage that burn in a parents 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 aresouls redeemed.

Mr. President my words would ring empty if it were not for the fact that many of us

here in Bulgarias 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 Bulgarias 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

anothers 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 foreignersin 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 Bulgarias 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 PenitentiarySofia, Bulgaria


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