Libya's top legal body was to meet yesterday to rule on death sentences on six foreign medics convicted of infecting children with the AIDS virus, with a compensation deal for victims set to win them a reprieve.
Families of the children have started receiving money under a deal that is expected to result in the lifting of the sentence against the five Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian doctors who have been on death row since 2004.
"The families received their checks overnight and started to cash them this morning," the families' spokesman Idriss Lagha said.
PHOTO: AP
The Kadhafi Foundation involved in mediating a resolution to the case that has dragged on for eight years and strained ties with the West, has said they had agreed to compensation of about US$1 million per child.
The medics, who have been behind bars since 1999, were convicted of deliberately injecting 438 children with HIV-tainted blood, but Lagha has said the number of victims has risen to about 460 with several mothers now infected.
The Supreme Judicial Council had initially been expected to review the case on Monday in possibly the final legal hurdle for the medics in a case that has dragged on for eight years.
But an official who requested anonymity said that although the council, presided over by the Libyan justice minister, had considered several cases on Monday it did not discuss the fate of the medics, and would meet again yesterday.
Nurses Snezhana Dimitrova, Nasya Nenova, Valya Cherveniashka, Valentina Siropulo and Kristiana Valcheva and doctor Ashraf Juma Hajuj were convicted of deliberately infecting the children at a hospital in Benghazi.
Fifty-six children have since died.
The death sentences against the six were confirmed by the Supreme Court last Wednesday, sparking renewed international concern over their fate.
The six have sought "pardon and mercy" from the council which can uphold, modify or overturn the Supreme Court verdict.
Under the deal it is expected they will be allowed to serve prison sentences in Bulgaria.
They have always protested their innocence and say confessions were extracted under torture while foreign experts have blamed poor hygiene at the hospital.
A special fund for the AIDS victims was set up by Libya and Bulgaria in 2005 under the EU.
Last week, Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalgham said the compensation would be paid by "certain European countries and charitable organizations, and from the Libyan state."
Without offering specifics, he said that the fund ran into "hun-dreds of millions of dollars."
The European Commission has denied it played any role in the compensation deal.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of