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.
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