A Libyan court acquitted five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian medic on Sunday of charges of slandering police officers by protesting that their confessions had been extracted under torture.
The ruling came just hours after an organisation headed by a son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi said the whole saga may soon be resolved.
At a hearing lasting less than a minute during which the six defendants were not present, judge Salem al-Homari announced they had been found not guilty and ordered the plaintiffs to pay the legal costs.
The nurses’ lawyer, Othman al-Bizanti, welcomed the ruling and said the charges had been ”unfounded”, but one of the plaintiffs, Jomaa al-Mishri, said it was taken under political pressure and that he would appeal.
The five nurses — Kristiana Valcheva, Nassia Nenova, Valia Cherveniachka, Valentina Siropoulo and Snejana Dimitrova — and doctor Ashraf Ahmed Juma had faced a maximum penalty of three years in prison.
The six have already been in custody for eight years and were condemned to death in May 2004 on charges of deliberately injecting more than 400 Libyan children with HIV, at a hospital in the city of Benghazi. The verdict was upheld last December but a final appeal, originally set for earlier this month, is due to open soon.
The accused said that their ”confessions” in the HIV trial were forced from them under torture, including beatings, electric shocks and being threatened with dogs.
The court ruling came shortly after the Gadaffi Foundation, headed by Saif al-Islam, announced in a statement that the saga may soon be resolved with the help of the European Union.
”Indications of an impending solution to this crisis have appeared after negotiations in Brussels on May 10 between representatives of the families of Libyan children stricken with Aids and the EU,” it said.
”Representatives of the families have welcomed with satisfaction the results of these negotiations, and rays of hope for a rapid resolution of this crisis have appeared,” foundation official Saleh Abdessalam said in the statement.
He said the Gadaffi Foundation ”is trying to bring together the points of view of the Libyan families’ representatives and those of the international community”.
Libyan sources said recently that the discreet negotiations could enable the condemned medics to avoid the death penalty.
The families of the infected children have said they will meet British Prime Minister Tony Blair next week during a visit by him to Libya as part of an African farewell tour before he leaves office on June 27. No confirmation of the visit was forthcoming from London, which does not announce the prime minister’s engagements in advance for security reasons.
Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin said this month the EU had so far contributed between €2-million and €2,5-million to an international fund set up in 2005. He said the money was to help the treatment of children afflicted with Aids and to train Libyan doctors. ”This is not money given as compensation,” he said.
Bulgaria insists the detained nurses are innocent and that compensation is not justified.
The medics, largely viewed as scapegoats by the international community, maintain their innocence based on testimony by foreign health experts who said the Aids epidemic in Libya’s second city was sparked by poor hygiene.
The six foreigners had also filed civil suits against 10 Libyan police officers, accusing them of torturing them. But a Tripoli court acquitted the officers, two of whom then accused the nurses of slander. — Sapa-AFP