A Libyan court on Sunday acquitted five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor on charges of slander.
The six were accused of making false accusations that Libyan officials had tortured them to extract confessions in an investigation into HIV infections at a children's hospital in Benghazi where they worked.
In that case, the defendants were found guilty of intentionally infecting 426 children with the HIV virus, and sentenced to death twice, in May 2004 and December 2006. They have been in jail since 1999. International AIDS experts have concluded that the virus predated the nurses' arrival and was probably spread by contaminated needles.
"The court dismisses the accusations," Judge Salem Hamrouni said of the slander charges in a hearing on Sunday that lasted 10 minutes, Reuters reported.
A spokesman for the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry, Dimitar Tsanchev, expressed his satisfaction with the result.
"This will allow an overall solution to be found for this painful case, which has lasted more than eight years," Tsanchev said. "We are very satisfied with the activity in recent weeks on behalf of the parties involved, in which the European Commission has played a leading role."
The verdict comes as the Libyan Supreme Court is considering the final appeal of the death sentences and as the families of the children are negotiating a settlement with the European Commission that may allow the six to be pardoned.
On Sunday, before the verdict was announced, the Qaddafi Foundation, headed by Saif al-Islam, son of the Libyan leader, Muammar Qaddafi, issued a statement saying that a resolution may be reached soon, Agence France-Presse reported. Islam has said before that the nurses and doctor would not be killed.
In previous years, unidentified Libyan officials had been quoted in the news media as saying that the nurses could be freed if Bulgaria paid compensation of US$10 million per child, the same amount that Libya agreed to pay each of the families of the people killed in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, for which Libya has accepted responsibility.
Bulgaria has refused to speak about "compensation" because it maintains that the nurses are innocent.
Unofficially, Bulgaria has been willing to help organize and donate to a humanitarian fund to provide medical care for the sick children, create modern health facilities in Benghazi and help the families financially. EU member states, the US and Libya have also contributed to the fund.
"Our main political instrument is the solidarity of our European partners," Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev said at a conference last week in Rome, AP reported.
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
FOREST SITE: A rescue helicopter spotted the burning fuselage of the plane in a forested area, with rescue personnel saying they saw no evidence of survivors A passenger plane carrying nearly 50 people crashed yesterday in a remote spot in Russia’s far eastern region of Amur, with no immediate signs of survivors, authorities said. The aircraft, a twin-propeller Antonov-24 operated by Angara Airlines, was headed to the town of Tynda from the city of Blagoveshchensk when it disappeared from radar at about 1pm. A rescue helicopter later spotted the burning fuselage of the plane on a forested mountain slope about 16km from Tynda. Videos published by Russian investigators showed what appeared to be columns of smoke billowing from the wreckage of the plane in a dense, forested area. Rescuers in
‘ARBITRARY’ CASE: Former DR Congo president Joseph Kabila has maintained his innocence and called the country’s courts an instrument of oppression Former Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) president Joseph Kabila went on trial in absentia on Friday on charges including treason over alleged support for Rwanda-backed militants, an AFP reporter at the court said. Kabila, who has lived outside the DR Congo for two years, stands accused at a military court of plotting to overthrow the government of Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi — a charge that could yield a death sentence. He also faces charges including homicide, torture and rape linked to the anti-government force M23, the charge sheet said. Other charges include “taking part in an insurrection movement,” “crime against the
RSS