Aids medics' lives spared
2007-07-17 23:33
Tripoli - Libya lifted death sentences on
Tuesday against five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor
convicted of deliberately infecting children with HIV, paving
the way for them to be freed after eight years in jail.
The ruling, following a payment of $1m each to 460
HIV victims' families, fell short of freeing the medics and
removing an obstacle to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's efforts
to end three decades of diplomatic isolation.
But, under a 1984 prisoner exchange agreement with Libya,
the North African country can transfer the six workers to
Bulgaria, where government officials have said they could be
pardoned by the Balkan state's president, Georgi Parvanov.
"The High Judicial Council decided to commute the death
sentences against the five Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian
doctor to life-imprisonment terms," the council said in a statement.
Torture
The six were sentenced to death last year after being
convicted of intentionally starting an HIV epidemic at a
children's hospital in the Mediterranean port of Benghazi.
The medics say confessions central to their case were
extracted under torture and that they are innocent, while
Bulgaria and its allies, the United States and the European
Union, have demanded the nurses be freed.
"Tomorrow morning we will start working on implementing the
transfer of the medics," Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ivailo
Kalfin told reporters in Sofia.
"For us the case will end once
they come back to Bulgaria."
Cautious hope
Reaction among the nurses' families in Bulgaria was one of
cautious hope.
"I feel good. But I will feel even better when I see them
come at the airport," said Zorka Anachkova, mother of nurse
Christiana Valcheva.
"The burden will not fall from my heart
until I see them home."
A spokesperson for the Libyan children's families, Idriss
Lagha, said the funds for the financial settlement had come from
the Benghazi International Fund, which had been financed by the
European Union, the United States, Bulgaria and Libya.