Families of Libyan HIV-infected children drop death penalty demand for sentenced medics

Relatives of the Libyan HIV-infected children have agreed to drop their demand that five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor be executed, the advocate for the families said Tuesday.

The six medical workers deny having infected more than 400 children and say their confessions were extracted under torture. Experts and outside scientific reports have said the children were contaminated as a result of unhygienic conditions at a hospital in the northeastern coastal city of Benghazi. Fifty of the infected children died.

"We have notified in writing that the families have relinquished their demand for the execution" of the six medics, Idriss Lagha, the head of the Libyan-based Association for the Families of HIV-Infected Children, told The Associated Press.

The families' approval to give up demanding the medics' death could pave the way for Libya's Supreme Judiciary Council to rule on the case later Tuesday, officials said.

Lagha told The Associated Press earlier Tuesday that 150 out of at least 400 victims' families already have received compensation in the case.

"Some of the families received the money and some are still waiting for their turn," Lagha said in a telephone interview.

"I expect in six hours, the whole financial settlement will be completed. The families will then issue a statement announcing that the settlement is done," he said.

Libya's Supreme Court last week upheld the death sentences for the medics, who have been jailed since 1999, in an appeal ruling.

"The fact that Libya's Supreme Judiciary Council session was called in such a short term after the latest court ruling shows the efforts of the Bulgarian government, the European Commission and the EU countries," Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev told reporters in Sofia Tuesday.

Bulgaria, he said, was ready "to react politically, as well as with concrete steps depending on Libya's decision."

Libya is under intense international pressure to free the medical workers, and officials here have said the families' acceptance of a compensation settlement was key to resolving the deadlock and would allow the death sentences to be withdrawn.

The assertion by Lagha, which could not immediately be independently confirmed, suggests that Libya's Supreme Judiciary council was likely to commute the death sentences.

Bulgaria's prime minister voiced hope on Tuesday that the fate of the medics in Libya will be solved in a positive way in short terms.

The son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, Seif al Islam, has told a French newspaper that $400 million in compensation would be paid to the families and would be financed in the form of debt remission.

Al Islam, who heads a powerful Libyan association that has worked to resolve the deadlock, told Le Figaro newspaper that the countries involved were Bulgaria, Slovakia, Croatia and the Czech Republic.

But government officials from Bulgaria and other nations reportedly involved in the deal have all denied they were sending cash to the families.

Bulgaria has said it would not pay compensation, because it would imply the medics were guilty.

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Associated Press correspondent Maggie Michael contributed to this report from Cairo, Egypt.