TRIPOLI, Dec 5 (AFP) - Tripoli said Sunday that it could review death sentences handed down to five Bulgarian nurses found guilty in an AIDS-tainting blood scandal, provided Sofia compensates families of the victims.
"There are three problems at stake: the families of the children who died of AIDs, the sick children and the Bulgarian nurses," Libyan Foreign Minister Abdelraham Shalgham told a news conference.
The first two matters have to be solved in order to discuss the third issue, Shalgham said.
"If the families of the victims are compensated and the sick treated in cooperation with the European Union, then the case of the Bulgarian nurses could be re-examined," he added.
He discussed the matter with Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passy on the sidelines of a late November gathering of ministers from the Mediterranean region held in The Hague, Shalgham said.
The five nurses and a Palestinian doctor were sentenced to death in May by a Libyan court, which found them guilty of knowingly injecting tainted blood into more than 400 children, infecting them with the virus that causes AIDS.
All six defendants pleaded not guilty to the charges, and two of the nurses and the doctor said during the trial that they were tortured into making confessions. They have appealed the ruling.
Two medical experts testified at the trial that the epidemic was the result of poor hygiene at the hospital and was under way before the nurses arrived. More than 40 of the children have died so far.
In October the EU lifted an 18-year-old arms embargo on Tripoli, in the latest sign of a thawing of relations with the former pariah state following its renunciation of weapons of mass destruction.
Tripoli is keen to benefit more from its warming ties with Europe. EU external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner has said that resolution of the prisoners issue "would also be very good for the Libyans".
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