End in sight for medics' Libyan ordeal

A $400 million package is believed to have saved the lives of six foreign medics who faced death penalties on charges of infecting Libyan children with HIV.

By Jill Carroll | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
and Nicole Itano | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the July 18, 2007 edition

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CAIRO and ATHENS - Libya closed its latest major spat with the world community when the families of 426 Libyan children asked that six foreign medics accused by the government of deliberately infecting the children with HIV be spared the death penalty.

The victims’ families agreed to a settlement Tuesday and asked that the sentences be removed after their lawyers said each family had received their share of a deal for about $400 million. The Libyan Supreme Court had upheld death sentences for the medics last week.

Libya’s top judicial body met Tuesday to decide whether to commute the executions, issue a pardon, or determine other punishments. According to the Associated Press, who quoted an anonymous Libyan official, the court decided later on Tuesday to commute the death sentences but imposed life sentences on the medics.

"We have notified in writing that the families have relinquished their demand for the execution" of the six medics, Idriss Lagha, the head of the Libyan-based Association for the Families of HIV-Infected Children, told the Associated Press.

The May 2004 decision to sentence the six to death met with an international outcry, and in the aftermath the European Union and the Bulgarian government pressed the Libyans hard to commute the sentences or free the healthcare workers altogether. Diplomatic pressure from the international community ramped up last week when the country's top court upheld the death sentence.

While the nurses and doctor confessed to the crimes, they say that those confessions were only given under torture. Today, they deny having anything to do with the infections that resulted in the death of 50 children. Experts have also concluded that the children were contaminated due to unhygienic conditions at the hospital in the city of Benghazi.

Seif al-Islam, son of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, told a French newspaper the $400 million would be paid to the families and financed through debt remission, the Associated Press reported.

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