Families of Libyan children infected with AIDS have accepted compensation topping 400 million dollars, which could lead to a death sentence on six foreign medics being lifted.
When I read this, I had a deja vu feeling.
Whit the word Libya, Panam 747 comes to my mind. Then bombings and hijacks.
Now I read this, it felt like the nurses were kidnapped.
The medics have been on death row since 2004 after being convicted of deliberately infecting 438 children with HIV-tainted blood in 1998.. Fifty-six have since died. The death sentence was confirmed by the supreme court on Wednesday, eight years after the six were first detained.
Today the spokesman for the families, insisted: "An agreement will not be signed until the money has been paid to the families."
On the other hand I read: In a study, an international team led by researchers from Oxford and Rome used the genetic sequences of the viruses isolated from the patients to reconstruct the exact phylogeny, or 'family tree', of the outbreak. Analysing the mutations that accumulated over time allowed the researchers to work out when different outbreaks occurred. They showed that the strain of HIV with which the children had been infected was already present and spreading locally in the mid-1990s, long before the medics arrived in Libya in 1998.
Who is right?
And paying money for the liberation of innocent medics, how do you call that?