Libya lifts death sentences on medics in HIV case

By Salah Sarrar

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - 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 by Libya's highest judicial body, made possible by a financial settlement of $1 million each to the 460 HIV victims' families, fell short of a hoped-for pardon for the medics, who insist they are innocent.

"The High Judicial Council decided to commute the death sentences against the five Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor to life-imprisonment terms," the judicial body said in a statement.

Bulgaria's allies the United States and the European Union have demanded the nurses be freed, and the case has been a major stumbling block to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's return to the international stage after decades of diplomatic isolation.

Bulgarian prosecutors said they were working to bring all six medics to the Balkan country, a move allowed under a 1984 agreement with Libya. Officials in Sofia have said Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov could then pardon them.

"We will do everything necessary for them to come home," said Margarita Popova, spokeswoman of Bulgaria's chief prosecutor's office. She could not say how long the process would take.

The six were sentenced to death last year after being convicted of intentionally starting an HIV epidemic at a children's hospital in the city of Benghazi.

The medics say confessions central to their case were extracted under torture and that they are innocent. Foreign HIV experts say the infections started before the six arrived at the hospital and were more likely to be the result of poor hygiene.

The victims' families have also said the case was part of a Western attempt to undermine Muslims and Libya. Fifty-six of the children have died, arousing widespread anger in the North African country.

STILL NOT OVER

Bulgaria, the EU and the United States say Libya has used the medics as scapegoats to deflect criticism of a dilapidated health care sector. A senior U.S. official said Tuesday's ruling was "a positive step forward", but not an end to the ordeal.

"We are encouraged at the commutation of the death sentences and we hope they will result in a way to let the medics return home," said senior State Department official David Welch.

But reaction among the nurses' families in Bulgaria, a poor Balkan country of 7.8 million people which joined the European Union this year, 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 spokesman 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, United States, Bulgaria and Libya.