Libya could overturn death verdicts on AIDS medics

TRIPOLI (AFP) - Libya's top legal body meets on Monday for a session that could see it commute to prison terms the death sentences on six foreign medics convicted of infecting children with the virus that causes AIDS.

The meeting of the Supreme Judicial Council comes a day after families of 438 Libyan children infected with HIV-tainted blood were confirmed to have accepted compensation totalling around 460 million dollars.

The judicial body is expected to examine the deal on Monday after the death sentences on five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who now has Bulgarian citizenship were confirmed by the Supreme Court on Wednesday.

It will also consider documents in which the medics seek a pardon and agree to rule out any legal action against the state of Libya linkeed to the eight years they have spent in prison.

The Supreme Judicial Council can modify the supreme court verdict or even overturn it.

Nurses Snezhana Dimitrova, Nasya Nenova, Valya Cherveniashka, Valentina Siropulo and Kristiana Valcheva and doctor Ashraf Juma Hajuj have been behind bars since February 1999 but have always protested their innocence.

The six have been on death row since 2004 after being convicted of deliberately infecting 438 children with HIV-tainted blood at a hospital in the country's second city of Benghazi.

Fifty-six children have since died.

"The families have accepted compensation in the order of a million dollars for each victim," Salah Abdessalem, director of the charitable Kadhafi Foundation run by Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi's son Seif al-Islam, said on Sunday.

But Idriss Lagha, the spokesman for the families, insisted that "an agreement will not be signed until the money has been paid to the families."

Lagha said the number of victims had now increased to almost 460 because a number of mothers had been infected by their children.
Among them are eight Palestinians, two Egyptians, two Syrians, two Sudanese and a Moroccan, he said.

A special fund for the AIDS victims was set up by Libya and Bulgaria in 2005 under the aegis of the European Union.

On Wednesday, Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalgham said the compensation would be paid by "certain European countries and charitable organisations, and from the Libyan state."

He refused to reveal how much money was already in the fund, except to say it ran into "hundreds of millions of dollars."

The Geneva-based International AIDS Society added its voice on Thursday to expert evidence suggesting the children were infected because of insanitary conditions at the hospital in Benghazi before the medics arrived there.

The European Union said last week it was still hoping a compensation deal could be reached with Libya that would see the death sentences commuted to prison terms which could be served in Bulgaria.