EU officials said Wednesday the death sentences passed on six foreign medics for allegedly deliberately infecting children with HIV, upheld in a Libyan court, were unacceptable and hoped the convicts would be shown clemency.

Libya's Supreme Court overturned the last possible appeal Wednesday, upholding death sentences for five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, in jail since 1999 after being convicted of infecting over 400 Libyan children with HIV at the Benghazia hospital in 1998.

"I firmly hope that clemency will be granted to the medical staff," European Union External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said, adding the case would go to the High Judicial Council, which has the power to pardon them.

The EU has called the verdict brutal insisting no serious evidence had been furnished against the medics, who themselves insist they are innocent of deliberately giving tainted blood to the children, and say they were tortured into confessions.

The six medics were found guilty and sentenced to death twice, first in 2004 and in 2006 after a court appeal.

The families of the infected children have demanded the maximum punishment for them saying more than 50 children have since died. "Death sentences are the only fair punishment for the murderers," they said.

But foreign media reported Wednesday that a deal had been reached Tuesday night between the EU and the Libyan government, which could lead to the medics' release.

The EU has held talks in private with the association of the families on funding the children's medical care. // RIA "Novosti"


Publication date: 12 July 2007   

Source:

Archive