Libya Lifts Death Sentences in HIV Case

Libya on Tuesday dropped death sentences against five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of infecting hundreds of children with HIV, commuting their punishments to life in prison, the foreign minister said. The ruling came after families of the children each received $1 million, according to a victims' advocate, and agreed to drop their demand for the execution of the six, who deny having infected more than 400 children and say their confessions were extracted under torture. Libya remains under intense international pressure to free the medical workers, and Foreign Minister Abdel-Rahman Shalqam said Tripoli was willing to consider the medics' deportation to Bulgaria. He said the negotiations would take place within "the legal framework and political context" between the two countries. "In return (for a transfer), improving the conditions of the infected children and their families should be taken into account," he told The Associated Press. Bulgaria's chief prosecutor, Kamen Mihov, said requests would be made Wednesday to have the medics leave Libya shortly. They have been jailed since 1999. But the medics' main Libyan defense lawyer, Osman al-Bizant, told the Al-Jazeera television network that their deportation would depend on "whether there is the possibility of carrying out the punishment there (in Bulgaria)."Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin called the Supreme Judiciary Council's ruling "a huge step in the right direction." Asked whether it was possible the medics would be pardoned after returning home, Kalfin said: "All judicial options are real." SOURCE OF THIS STORY