Libya's Supreme Court today scrapped death sentences against five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor convicted of infecting children with the HIV virus and sent the case back to a lower court for retrial.
The six, jailed since 1999, had been sentenced to death by firing squad in a case blocking Libyan efforts to improve ties with the West. Several diplomats said Libya was eager to put the case behind it and return to mainstream global politics.
The Supreme Court accepted appeals against the lower court ruling both on substance and procedure, one of their lawyers said. The ruling followed agreement last week between Libya and Bulgaria to set up a fund to help families of the sick children.
The five nurses and the doctor had been convicted of infecting 426 Libyan children with the HIV virus in Benghazi.
They had said they were innocent and their confessions were extracted under torture. AIDS experts have said the outbreak started before the nurses arrived and was probably caused by poor hygiene.
"The court has accepted the appeals by the nurses and the doctor and sends the cases back to the lower court for retrial," Ali Alouss, the Supreme Court presiding judge, told an appeals hearing.
Lawyers told Reuters that meant the death sentences were cancelled and the lower court in the Mediterranean port of Benghazi which had earlier issued the death sentences would retry the cases.
"The Supreme Court endorsed the appeals in their substance and technicalities. That means the court cancelled the death sentences and lower court will retry the cases and come with a new ruling," Mahmoud Maghribi, one of the nurses' lawyers, said.
Bulgaria's Foreign Ministry reacted favourably to the ruling. A spokesman said Bulgaria hoped the retrial and the repeal of the death sentences were "a recognition of the serious procedural breaches in the trial".