Lagos — If the Libyan Government fails to grant prerogative of mercy to the five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of injecting more than 400 Libyan children with HIV in 1998, they could be heading for the hangmen's noose as the country's Supreme Court has sealed their case.
Yesterday, Libya's apex court upheld the death sentences imposed on these medical practitioners and also rejected the results of a 2003 investigation by two of the world's leading AIDS experts. They had claimed that "unsanitary" medical conditions at Benghazi Children's Hospital were to blame for the children becoming infected with HIV. The nurses and doctor have been in jail now for nearly a decade.
But the fate of the convicts remained uncertain yesterday, despite the court's ruling on the one hand, and months of recent negotiations to secure their release on the other.
The Supreme Judicial Council, a reputable legal organisation in Libya, is scheduled to meet next Monday, and has the power to overturn yesterday's ruling or reduce the sentences for the six.
The European Union (EU) and the United States have repeatedly pressed the Libyan government to free the six, and groups of Nobel Laureates have visited Tripoli to plead their case with the Libyan leader, Moammar Ghaddafi.
The decision generated stern reaction, leaving leaders of the EU in disappointment and dismay owing to the high-level negotiation going on to save the convicts from the noose of Libyan hangman.
Ms. Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the EU's Commissioner for External Relations, who visited Libya in the spring said: "I deeply regret the verdict of the Supreme Court confirming the death sentence for the Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor. I firmly hope that clemency will be granted to the medical staff.
"This should be done in the same spirit of mutual respect and humanitarian compassion which characterized the European response to the plight of the Benghazi children and their families, Ferrero-Waldner said."
Several senior officials of EU also issued independent statements on the matter as well, including the commissioner for justice, Franco Frattini, who said his reaction was "utterly negative." In the past year, the European Union has given substantial financial aid to Libya in hopes of resolving the case. One high-level union diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said the total amount was equivalent to more than 10 million euros ($14 million) for each infected child.
The union has set up treatment programs in Libya for the children, built medical facilities and purchased equipment.
Bulgaria became a member of the European Union at the beginning of this year. Its entry into the union has raised the public profile of a case that had been simmering on the back burner for years.
Dr. Zdravko Georgiev, the husband of one of the jailed nurses, said in a telephone interview from Libya that the families of the nurses were dismayed by the ruling. "After spending more than eight monstrous years in Libyan dungeons, we are exhausted to death," he said.
Georgiev was himself initially charged and jailed in the case; he was released after four years, but has not been allowed to leave Libya.
"We expected for the third time to hear the word 'death,' and despite that, it's still a shock," he said. "We don't need a pardon, we need justice," he said
But recently, representatives of the Ghaddafi Foundation, a charitable organization run by the son of Libyan President Gaddafi, said repeatedly that a deal to free the five nurses and the doctor was imminent. Multiple calls to the foundation's offices in Tripoli were not immediately returned or answered.
Under Islamic law, the families of the children can accept compensation for the injury and express forgiveness, which would lead to the dismissal of the charges against the six. Libyan negotiators have long said that that would be the easiest way to resolve the matter, according to Bulgarian and European diplomats involved in the discussions.
But the Bulgarians have refused to consider suggestions that it offered to pay the families 10 million euros for each infected child, on the ground that making such payments would be tantamount to an admission of guilt, and that in any case the country could not afford that amount of money.
Dimiter Tzantchev, the foreign minister of Bulgaria, said in a statement that the court's decision was not a surprise, and that his country "is ready to react appropriately in the next days following the development on the situation." He said there would be no further official comment yesterday.
While the Gaddafi Foundation has said it was brokering an agreement with the children's families to resolve the case, there have been continuing signals that the families would not easily be placated.
"We are awaiting the execution of the death sentence," the families' lawyer, Al-Monseif Khalifa, said in Tripoli yesterday, adding that members of 20 of the families demonstrated outside the court.
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Analysts said that part of the problem was that Ghaddafi is not popular in Benghazi, and his government may not feel that it is in a position to reverse a death sentence that is widely viewed as just and proper there.
The convoluted case began more than a decade ago, in 1998, before Bulgaria was a member of the EU and before Ghaddafi openly renounced terrorism. At a time of economic upheaval and rapid inflation in Bulgaria, the five nurses, who were then in their late 30s and 40s, signed contracts to work at Benghazi Children's Hospital for mundane reasons: to buy an apartment or to put a daughter through college. The Palestinain doctor had grown up in Libya.
The six were arrested in 1999. In the initial indictment, which reads like a spy novel, Libyan prosecutors claimed that the nurses intentionally infected the children as part of a plot by Mossad, the Israeli secret service to undermine the Libyan state. Prosecutors claimed that the nurses confessed to the crime, and that investigators had found vials of tainted blood in one of the nurses' rooms.
