Libya could quash death sentences

Libya could quash death sentences against five Bulgarian nurses jailed for infecting hundreds of children with HIV if the victims received ample humanitarian aid, Bulgarian media reported. Convicted for deliberately starting an epidemic that had killed at least 40 children, the nurses were at the centre of a standoff threatening Tripoli's efforts to renew ties with the West after decades of diplomatic isolation.
Libyan Foreign Minister Mohammed Abdel-Rahman Shalgam said a humanitarian aid package being arranged by Bulgaria and its partners could solve the dispute.
"In Islamic law we have the so called 'blood money', which can help those who suffer," Bulgarian daily Standart quoted Shalgam as saying at the Euro-Mediterranean summit in Barcelona after meeting his Bulgarian counterpart.
"For the ill children we should secure medicine and good hospitals. In that case the death sentences will drop automatically." The nurses and a Palestinian doctor, in jail since 1999, had been sentenced to face a firing squad in May 2004 for infecting 426 children with HIV in a hospital in the Mediterranean port of Benghazi.