Tripoli, Libya – A settlement has been reached in the case of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who have been sentenced to death in Libya for infecting 400 children with the AIDS virus, the spokesman for the country’s Khadafy foundation said Tuesday.
Spokesman Salah Abdessalem did not say how the deal reached with families of the HIV-infected children would affect the case against the six foreign medical workers, who were convicted despite a report that HIV was rampant in the hospital before they began working there.
The announcement came a day before Libya’s Supreme Court was to rule on an appeal of their sentence, which caused an international outcry and a diplomatic crisis with Bulgaria and the European Union.
The foundation had tried to reach a deal by which Bulgaria would compensate the victims. But the Bulgarian government rejected the proposal, saying it would imply the nurses’ guilt.
The Khadafy International Foundation for Charity Associations is headed by Seif al Islam, son of longtime Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy. On Monday, a Bulgarian newspaper quoted him as saying the six medics had received unjust verdicts.
“We don’t want to see executions in Libya, of Libyans or Bulgarians,” the newspaper 24 Chassa quoted him as saying.
