Libya to review death sentences to Nurses
Pakistan Times Wire Service

TRIPOLI: Libya has expressed intentions to review death sentences handed down to five Bulgarian nurses on charges of having "knowingly" infected 400 children with AIDS.

The son of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi has promised that Libya will not carry out the death sentences handed down to five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor in a high-profile Libyan AIDS trial, an Arabic TV reported.

"I guarantee we will not execute them," Kadhafi's son Seif al-Islam told the television.

Al-Islam heads the Kadhafi Goodwill Foundation that has been involved in negotiations concerning the case of the medics.

The five Bulgarians and a Palestinian doctor were condemned to death in December on charges of having "knowingly" infected with AIDS-tainted blood over 400 Libyan children in the Al-Fateh hospital in the northeastern town of Benghazi where they worked.

Fifty-three of the children have already died of the infection.

But the defendants, who have already spent eight years in a Libyan prison, maintain their innocence on the basis of testimony by international health experts who said the outbreak occurred long before their arrival at the hospital and was caused by poor hygiene.●