LIBYA LIFTS EXECUTION FOR HIV MEDICS AFTER PAYMENTS TO FAMILIES OF INFECTED CHILDREN

Libya dropped death sentences against five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accus.ed of infecting hundreds of children with HIV, commuting their punishments to life in prison, the foreign minister said.
The ruling came after families of the children each received €730,000 and agreed to drop their execution demands. The six deny having infected more than 400 children and say their confessions were extracted under torture.
Libya remains under intense international pressure to free the medical workers, and Foreign Minister Abdel-Rahman Shalqam said Tripoli was willing to consider the medics' deportation to Bulgaria. Bulgaria's chief prosecutor, Kamen Mihov, said requests would be made to have the medics leave Libya shortly. They have been jailed since 1999. Asked whether it was possible the medics would be pardoned after returning home, Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin said: "All judicial options are real." Libya's Supreme Court upheld the six medics' death sentences last week, but Shalqam said the country's Supreme Judiciary Council decided today to commute the sentences to life in prison. "Issuing this decision automatically closes the legal case against them," Shalqam told the AP.