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Monday, December 26, 2005The Libyan Supreme Court on Sunday overturned the convictions of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who had been sentenced to death on charges of infecting hundreds of Libyan children with H.I.V. The politically charged case was sent back to a lower court for a retrial. The reason for the reprieve, alas, appears not to be due so much to the triumph of justice as to the power of money: The decision came days after the United States, Britain and the European Union joined Bulgaria in agreeing to set up the International Benghazi Families Support Fund to finance the children's medical care. The size of the fund was not disclosed, but Libya had said earlier that the medical workers' release was possible if Bulgaria paid the children's families hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation. There's good reason to think the doctor and nurses were framed: At one point, the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, had accused the health workers of acting on orders from the CIA and the Israeli secret service, Mossad. Libya later rowed back on this allegation. The medics had always protested their innocence and said they had been tortured by the police, with daily beatings, sexual assault and electric shocks. They called expert witnesses, including one of the team which discovered the Aids virus, who said this was an epidemic caused by poor hygiene at the hospital, not by any international conspiracy. .....Western diplomats say the prosecutions arose because the authorities simply needed someone to blame for a tragedy which caused outrage in Libya. posted by Sydney on 12/26/2005 07:18:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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