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End of Nightmare in Sight

Libya Distributes HIV Funds to Families

Libya has started distributing money to the families of hundreds of children infected with HIV, as part of a deal which could see the release of the six foreign medics sentenced to death on charges of deliberately infecting them. Internationally, the case has been criticized as a show trial.

There is growing hope that the nightmare may soon end for the six foreign medical workers sentenced to death in Libya. The authorities in the country have distributed checks to the families of the 426 children who were infected with HIV, a move which could pave the way for the release of the Palestinian doctor and five Bulgarian nurses.

"More than half of the families have received the compensation money and the remaining families would get the payout money within the next few hours," Idriss Lagha of the Association for the Families of HIV-Infected Children told Reuters on Tuesday. "When all the families have received the money a deal will be announced," he said.

The medical workers were accused of deliberately infecting the children with the HIV virus when they worked at Benghazi hospital in the late 1990s. Libya's Supreme Court upheld their death sentences last week and the case was then referred to the High Judicial Council, which has the power to commute sentences or issue pardons.

Under the terms of the agreement, more than $400 million is being paid out to the families of the children. The High Judicial Council is expected to rule on the case later Tuesday once all of the families have accepted the payments. "When they say the completion of the deal that means the families had already received the money in their hands," a source told Reuters. Othman Bizanti, a leading lawyer for the nurses, said he had "great hope" the council would decide to free the medics.

The doctor and five nurses were arrested in 1999 and were sentenced to death twice, first in 2004 and then again in 2006 following an appeal. They insisted they were innocent and were tortured into making confessions. Their defense lawyers argued that it was poor hygiene at the hospital that led to the infection of the children, 50 of whom have already died. During the trial, the pioneering doctor Luc Montagnier, one of the first to identify the HIV virus, told the court that the virus had been in the hospital before the accused started working there in 1998.

Libya has come under intense international pressure to free the medics. The case has prevented Libya and its leader Moammar Gadhafi from emerging from three decades of diplomatic isolation, despite scrapping the country's program of prohibited weapons in 2003.

smd/ap/reuters