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TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) - Libya on Tuesday dropped death sentences against five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of infecting hundreds of children with HIV, commuting their punishments to life in prison, the foreign minister said.
The ruling came after families of the children each received $1 million, according to a victims' advocate, and agreed to drop their demand for the execution of the six, who deny having infected more than 400 children and say their confessions were extracted under torture.
Libya remains under intense international pressure to free the medical workers, and Foreign Minister Abdel-Rahman Shalqam said Tripoli was willing to consider the medics' deportation to Bulgaria. He said the negotiations would take place within "the legal framework and political context" between the two countries.
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