March 30
LIBYA/BULGARIA:
Libyan Prosecutors Urge Revision of Bulgarian Nurses Death Sentences
Prosecutors have asked Libyas Supreme Court to revoke death sentences of 5
Bulgarian nurses convicted of causing an AIDS outbreak and return the case
for reconsideration to a lower court that issued the verdict.
The Supreme Court was scheduled to rule on the motion on May 31, Bulgarias
state TV reported Wednesday, a day after the 5-judge panel heard appeals
by the nurses and a Palestinian doctor sentenced to a firing squad along
with them.
The TV said the prosecutors cited omissions the lower court in the city
Benghazi made, while convicting the medics of intentionally injecting
blood contaminated with the HIV virus that causes AIDS to more than 400
children at a local hospital. Libya says more than 40 children have
developed AIDS and died.
The Benghazi court has ignored evidence by international experts, who
testified the infection had started due to poor hygiene at the hospital
years before it hired the medics in 1998. Instead, it credited confessions
of guilt the nurses have renounced saying police extorted them by torture
during the preliminary interrogations.
Defense attorneys have urged the court to acquit and release the medics.
The TV quoted legal experts as saying that reconsideration of the case in
Benghazi could take another couple of years. The medics have been in
Libyan custody since February 1999.
(source: Bulgarian News Network)
(In) EUROPE:
Muslim thinker fights death penalty -- Dr Ramadan says such punishments
should be put in context
A prominent Muslim intellectual in Europe, Tariq Ramadan, has called for a
moratorium on corporal punishment, stoning and the death penalty in the
Muslim world.
Under what are known as the "hudud" laws, adulterers can be stoned to
death and thieves can have their right hands amputated.
Dr Ramadan has now launched a campaign which he hopes will resonate across
the Muslim world, as well as in the West.
To Western liberals, it is indefensible that such punishments are still
carried out in parts of the Muslim world - such as Pakistan, Iran and
Saudi Arabia - and they argue the practices should be outlawed.
But Dr Ramadan counters that - since these punishments have a basis in
classical Islamic law - it is the wrong approach.
The real issue, he says, is the context in which the hudud penalties are
applicable.
He argues that the political and legal systems in the Muslim world do not
allow for just and equal treatment of the individual and that "you can't
go on killing poor people and women" who, he says, are the main victims of
the current situation.
Sensitive issue
His call for a moratorium is likely to be controversial. While it does not
go far enough for Western liberals, it goes too far for many conservative
Muslims.
As arguably Europe's best-known Muslim intellectual, Dr Ramadan has
sparked controversy with his views, especially in France.
But at the same time he has built up a large following, especially among
young Muslim men and women living in the West.
This is partly because he is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna - founder of
Egypt's oldest and biggest Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, and
partly because of his message that it is possible to be Muslim and Western
at the same time.
He also argues that Muslim intellectuals living in the West have the
freedom to speak out on sensitive issues and are therefore in a position
to influence opinion in the heartlands of the Muslim world.
(source: BBC News)
