Six foreign medics reprieved from a death sentence in Libya after an eight-year ordeal over the infection of hundreds of children with HIV-tainted blood were facing an anxious wait on Wednesday as the world called on Tripoli to send them home.
Libya’s highest judicial body on Tuesday commuted to life in prison the death sentences of the five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor after a multi-million dollar compensation deal was hammered out with victims’ families.
The six, who have been on death row since 2004, could serve out their sentences in Bulgaria, as the two countries have an extradition treaty and the Palestinian was recently granted Bulgarian citizenship.
It was not immediately clear if or when they would be sent home, but Bulgaria’s chief prosecutor was due on Wednesday to launch the extradition process.
“From tomorrow, the prosecutor’s office will take steps to activate the Bulgarian-Libyan extradition treaty,” spokesman Kamen Mikhov said. “It is a routine procedure that we have launched immediately in other cases.”
Washington and the European Union joined in calling on Tripoli to send the medics home after the final legal hurdle in a case that has dragged on for eight years and strained ties between Libya and the West.
Death penalty lifted
“We urge the Libyan government to now find a way to allow the medics to return home,” US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, who said Washington was “encouraged” by the lifting of the death sentences.
The European Commission described the ruling of the Supreme Judicial Council as a “relief” while adding that the objective remained “their transfer to the European Union as soon as possible”.
“The decision of Libya’s Supreme Judicial Council is a big step in the right direction but for us the case will be over when our compatriots return to Bulgaria,” Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ivaylo Kalfin said.
“This decision rules out the worst, the death penalty, and opens the way for triggering a prisoner transfer treaty we have with Libya.”
The medics, who have been behind bars since 1999, were convicted of deliberately injecting 438 children in a Benghazi hospital with HIV-tainted blood. Fifty-six children have since died.
The decision, which overturned a Supreme Court ruling last week, came shortly after the children’s families dropped their call for the death penalty following a compensation deal worth millions of dollars.
“We have renounced the death penalty... after all our conditions were met,” said Idriss Lagha, spokesman for the families.
Nurses Snezhana Dimitrova, Nasya Nenova, Valya Cherveniashka, Valentina Siropulo and Kristiana Valcheva and doctor Ashraf Juma Hajuj have always pleaded their innocence.
Confessions
They say confessions were extracted under torture and foreign experts have blamed poor hygiene at the hospital for the AIDS outbreak in Libya’s second city of Benghazi on the Mediterranean coast.
Among the victims are eight Palestinians, two Egyptians, two Syrians, two Sudanese and a Moroccan as well as Libyans, according to Lagha.
The compensation money was paid to the victims’ families out of a special Benghazi AIDS fund created in 2005 by Tripoli and Sofia under EU auspices.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy voiced satisfaction with the Tripoli ruling, shortly before announcing he will travel to Libya in the next few days at the start of a tour of Africa.
Rights group Amnesty International also welcomed the decision but said it was “overdue and insufficient” and called for the medics’ release.
“The Libyan authorities must ensure that legal safeguards intended to protect suspects from prolonged detention without charge and torture are implemented and that all accused receive fair trials,” it added in a statement.