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Libya Cancels Death Sentences Against 6 in Alleged HIV Plot
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Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalgham told reporters last week that the money would come from "certain European countries and charitable organizations, and from the Libyan state."
On July 11, Libya's Supreme Court confirmed the death sentences. But on Tuesday the council reversed that decision, hours after families of the victims dropped their demand for capital punishment and said compensation had been paid.
Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi has worked aggressively in recent years to repair his once-dire image in the West. Long designated by U.S. officials as a sponsor of terrorism, Gaddafi agreed in 2003 to give up his nation's nuclear weapons program. Last year, the United States restored full diplomatic relations with Libya. Last week, Bush announced that he was sending the first U.S. ambassador to Tripoli in nearly 35 years.
Continuing international outcry over the health workers' situation has been an obstacle to Gaddafi's campaign to repair his image. But at home, he had been under severe political pressure from Libyans angry at what they saw as a foreign plot to infect Libyan children.
Gaddafi's son, Seif al-Islam, who heads the Gaddafi Foundation, played a key role in mediating with the families. Reports said the final settlement was about $1 million for each infected child's family; the Libyan government had initially suggested about $13 million per child.
That figure was seen as closely linked to what the Libyan government agreed to pay to each of the victims in the 1988 bombing of a U.S. jumbo jet over Lockerbie, Scotland. Gaddafi's government accepted responsibility for the bombing after a Libyan intelligence officer was convicted in the case, in which 259 people on Pan American Flight 103 and 11 people on the ground in Scotland were killed.
That settlement was also key in helping Gaddafi win an end to economic and diplomatic sanctions imposed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986.
Scottish authorities ruled last month that the Libyan intelligence officer, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, may have been wrongly convicted and granted his request for a new appeal.
