TRIPOLI, Libya – The death sentences for five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV have been commuted to life in prison, Libya’s foreign minister said Tuesday.
The ruling came after the families of the children each received $1 million 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.
Experts and outside scientific reports have said the children were contaminated as a result of unhygienic conditions at a hospital in the northeastern coastal city of Benghazi. Fifty of the infected children died.
The Libyan foreign minister said Tripoli was willing to consider the medics’ deportation to Bulgaria.
Asked whether it was possible the medics, who have been jailed since 1999, would be pardoned after returning home, the Bulgarian foreign minister said, “All judicial options are real.”
Gadhafi’s son, Seif al Islam, said that the $400 million in compensation would be financed in the form of debt remission. He said countries involved were Bulgaria, Slovakia, Croatia and the Czech Republic.
Bulgaria has said it would not pay compensation because it would imply the medics were guilty, but the country’s foreign minister acknowledged Tuesday that Bulgaria was considering participating in an international fund for humanitarian aid to Libya.
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