Libyans Ready to Trade Bulgarians' Death for Life Jail

Politics | February 13, 2005, Sunday // 00:00
Libyans Ready to Trade Bulgarians' Death for Life Jail The families of HIV-infected children want medical help in European clinics, free medication for life and a specialized AIDS hospital in Benghazi. Photo by bbc.co.uk

Libyan families of HIV-infected children voiced willingness to negotiate passing life-time sentences on the five Bulgarian nurses who are on the death row for allegedly causing HIV outbreak at a children's hospital in Benghazi.

At a meeting with Bulgarian journalists at the Benghazi hospital the families of infected children laid down their conditions - that Bulgaria acknowledges the nurses' guilt and pay compensations, to include free treatment of the infected children in European clinics, free medication during their life and building a specialized AIDS hospital in Benghazi.

The parents will also seek financial indemnities, ranging from EUR 10 M to EUR 100 M for each HIV-infected child.

According to them HIV-infected children number 429, 47 of whom are already dead.

Earlier on Sunday a Southern Libyan court rescheduled for March 20 the hearing of the two civil indemnity claims, filed by families of infected Libyan children in the HIV trial against the Bulgarian medics there.

Relatives of the two twin sisters, who died of AIDS, are demanding 10 million Libyan dinars.

The claims were tabled in the middle of December last year.

In May 2004 Libya found the five Bulgarian health workers and a Palestinian doctor guilty of having caused the death of 40 children and of infecting almost 400 others with HIV at a Benghazi hospital.

The nurses were sentenced to death by a firing squad, sparking cries of foul from Bulgaria and its allies the United States and the European Union.

The medics' confessions, which were extracted with torture, is the only evidence proving their guilt.

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