(SOFIA) - Bulgaria awarded EU Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner its highest distinction here Monday for helping to broker the recent release of six Bulgarian medics sentenced to death in Libya in a high-profile AIDS case.

Bulgarian President Georgy Parvanov awarded the Stara Planina order to the external relations commissioner at a special ceremony in Sofia "for her exceptional contribution in finding a resolution to the Benghazi case and for saving our medical workers, who were innocently jailed in Libya," he said.

The five Bulgarian nurses and a doctor of Palestinian origin had been held in a Libyan jail for eight and a half years and sentenced to death three times for allegedly infecting more than 400 Libyan children with HIV-tainted blood in a hospital in the northeastern city of Benghazi.

But they had always maintained their innocence.

Following a 460-million-dollar deal with the families of the children and tough last-minute negotiations in Tripoli, Ferrero-Waldner and France's first lady Cecilia Sarkozy succeeded in brokering the medics' release, and the six returned on July 24 on board a French presidential plane to Bulgaria where they were formally pardoned by Parvanov upon arrival.

"I am very honoured to receive this high decoration today ... Let me take it on behalf of all my colleagues from the EU," a visibly-moved Ferrero-Waldner said Monday.

She described the medics' release as "a solidarity undertaking of the whole European Union," adding: "The greatest reward for me was the moment when finally at 6:15 am in the morning of July 24 they (the medics) were coming to the plane."

"This was my personal reward -- when I saw them -- and suddenly those who had been sad, who had been tense, who had suffered so much were smiling," she said.

Ferrero-Waldner, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Cecilia Sarkozy were also made honorary citizens of Sofia Monday for their role in saving the medics.

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