Libya HIV death sentences upheld

Libya's Supreme Court has upheld the death sentences imposed in 2004 on five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor for infecting children with HIV.

However, a mediating body - the Gaddafi Foundation - has reportedly agreed a financial settlement with the children's families.

This could see the death penalties overturned by Libya's High Judicial Council at a later date.

The imprisonment of the medics has caused an international outcry.

They insist they are innocent of deliberately giving tainted blood to the children at the Benghazi hospital in 1998.

During their trial, one of the doctors who helped first isolate the HIV virus, Luc Montagnier, testified that the hospital epidemic began before the foreign medics started working at the hospital.

 
The government in Tripoli is caught between its wish to repair ties with the West and to defend its own legal system, the BBC's Eastern Europe reporter Nick Thorpe says.