€290m Aids fund may save death row medics

FAMILIES of Libyan children infected with Aids have accepted more than $400 million (€290m) in compensation, a move which could lead to a death sentence on six foreign medics being lifted.

The deal was confirmed yesterday by the charitable Gaddafi foundation, run by Libyan leader Muamar Gaddafi’s son Seif al-Islam.

The group’s director Salah Abdessalem said: “The families have accepted compensation in the order of $1m (€725,505) for each victim.”

Libya’s top legal body is expected to examine the deal and could rule that the five Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian doctor on death row may serve prison time rather than face execution. The medics have been on death row since 2004 after being convicted of deliberately infecting 438 children with HIV-tainted blood. 56 children have since died.

The death sentence was confirmed by the supreme court on Wednesday, eight years after the six were first detained.

The medics have signed a letter to the supreme judicial council requesting “pardon and mercy”. The council which is due to meet today will consider the request and has the power to overturn the verdict.

But Idriss Lagha, the spokesman for the families, insisted yesterday: “An agreement will not be signed until the money has been paid.”

He said the number of victims had increased to almost 460 because a number of mothers had been infected by their children.

Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalgham said the compensation would come from “certain European countries and charitable organisations, and from the Libyan state”.

A special fund for the Aids victims was set up by Libya and Bulgaria in 2005 under the aegis of the EU.

Shalgham refused to reveal how much money was already in the fund, except to say it ran into “hundreds of millions of dollars”. As employer of the six medics, the government would pay €250,000-€600,000 to the family of each victim.

Nurses Snezhana Dimitrova, Nasya Nenova, Valya Cherveniashka, Valentina Siropulo and Kristiana Valcheva and Palestinian doctor Ashraf Juma Hajuj have been behind bars since February 1999 but have always protested their innocence.

On Thursday the International Aids Society expressed “shock and dismay” at the confirmation of the death penalty for the six.

The Geneva-based body, which represents more than 11,000 health workers in upwards of 170 countries, said evidence suggested the children had become infected because of insanitary conditions at the hospital in Benghazi before the medics arrived there.