World Council Of Churches Urges Libya To Spare Lives Healh Workers

five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who were condemned to death by firing squad on charges of "deliberately" infecting   hundreds of Lybian children with the AIDS virus, HIV. Libya’s Supreme Court was to rule on the nurses’ appeal on May 31, after a lower court said last year the health workers were guilty of "causing the death of 40 children and of infecting" about 400 others with HIV at a Benghazi hospital.

The medics have denied the charges and say their alleged confessions to police were obtained under duress and torture. In addition some experts have argued that the spread of HIV was caused by poor hygiene conditions in the hospital. 

In a letter to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi obtained by BosNewsLife, WCC General Secretary Samuel Kobia said his organization of 347 member churches was "deeply disturbed at the sentencing to death of the six health workers," by the Libyan court.

"GOD’S IMAGE"

The WCC is opposed to capital punishment as "it believes that all human beings created in God’s image have inherent dignity and are of infinite worth and that the taking of human life is against the will of God," Kobia wrote. "The capital punishment operates against the Christian principles of compassion and love dear to all religions."

Kobia said the WCC had been "a long-standing advocate for the abolishment of capital punishment" and had urged governments "to sign and ratify the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that aim at the abolition of the death penalty."

He appealed to Gaddafi to grant clemency "on humanitarian grounds" to "spare the lives of Kristiana Vulcheva, Nasya Nenova, Valentina Siropulo, Valya Chervenyashka, Snezhana Dimitrova and Ashraf al-Hajuj." But so far Gaddafi has rejected calls from the West to release the nurses.
 
PRESIDENT VISIT

The WCC letter came as Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov was scheduled to visit Libya later this week to discuss with Gadaffi the fate of the medics, who have been detained since 1999. "President (Georgi Parvanov) will start a two-day visit to Tripoli on May 27, following an invitation by Qaddafi,” ahead of the upcoming Supreme Court ruling, his spokeswoman Boika Bashlieva said in press statements monitored by BosNewsLife News Center in Budapest.

Analysts say the final outcome of the case is expected to become an issue in Bulgaria’s June 25 general elections and could affect support for the ruling centrist party of ex-king Simeon Saxe-Coburg, who has insisted on a "quiet diplomatic approach" to the case. (With BosNewsLife Research, BosNewsLife News Center and reports from Bulgaria and Libya)