Sarkozy's Wife Flies to Libya to Help Free Hiv Medics

An ordeal of death sentences and eight years in jail for five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor appeared to be approaching a happy ending last night in Libya when France's first lady and a European commissioner arrived in Tripoli hoping to secure their release.

Late last night the European commission said Cécilia Sarkozy, wife of the French president, and Bennito Ferrero-Waldner of Austria, the European commissioner for external affairs, had travelled to Tripoli "to try to free the Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor". The medics were sentenced to death in December 2005 after being convicted of infecting 426 children with HIV while working at a hospital in the city of Benghazi. Fifty-six of the children have since died.

In jail since 1999, the medics have always maintained their innocence and said they were tortured to make them confess. Western scientists say negligence and poor hospital hygiene were the real culprits and that the six were scapegoats.

Last week Libya's high judiciary council commuted death sentences on the six after the families of the victims dropped their demand that they be executed.

The sentences had been upheld by Libya's supreme court a few days earlier. European diplomats have been working behind the scene attempting to achieve a deal that would get the six released.

If the two women leave Libya with the captives, Colonel Muammar Gadafy's campaign to rehabilitate himself with world leaders and to close a long period of international pariah status will have advanced. According to French reports yesterday, Mrs Sarkozy went to Tripoli yesterday accompanied by the president's chief of staff on board the presidential jet. She met Col Gadafy.

The French magazine Le Point said yesterday that the intention was that the captives would leave Libya on board the jet. Mr Sarkozy is scheduled to visit Libya on Wednesday.