Libya to rule next month on medics in HIV case

Libya:Libya's supreme court has said it will rule next month on the fate of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor sentenced to death for infecting hundreds of children with HIV, amid suggestions that a compensation deal could soon secure their release.

Judge Fathi Dhan said a verdict on the medics' final appeal would be delivered on July 11th, in a case that has hampered Libya's attempts to boost ties with Washington and the European Union.

The medics have been in jail since 1999, when they were arrested for deliberately infecting 426 children with HIV-tainted blood in a hospital in the city of Benghazi.

They deny the charges and accuse their jailers of torture, while western HIV experts say the outbreak of the virus began before the medics started working in the hospital and was probably caused by bad hygiene practices that Libyan officials will not acknowledge.

The families of the children want millions of euro in compensation.

The EU, United States and Bulgaria have joined forces to set up a so-called "solidarity" fund to provide compensation and treatment for the victims.

The negotiations have been conducted with the Gadafy Foundation, led by a powerful son of Libyan leader Muammar Gadafy.

"A statement on a deal between the families of the children suffering from Aids and the European Union will be announced on Friday," an unnamed official from the foundation told news agencies yesterday.

Analysts say the supreme court will probably uphold the death sentence on the medics, which would then leave it up to the government-led high judicial council to commute the sentence.

The case has placed Col Gadafy in a difficult position: the US and EU want the medics to be freed, but that would enrage many people in Benghazi and hold Libya's medical and judicial systems up to ridicule.

Col Gadafy is also believed to be under pressure from his security services to only release the prisoners in return for the

Libyan intelligence agent being held in a Glasgow jail for the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing, for which Tripoli paid €2 billion in compensation.

On a visit to Bulgaria this month, President George Bush said the US was "deeply concerned about the plight of the nurses. They should be released and they should be allowed to return to their families."