Gaddafi wants death penalty scrapped

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has called again for the death penalty to be banned in his country but stressed the decision should not result from pressure from abroad.

The end of the death penalty in Libya would spare the lives of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor sentenced to death last May after being found guilty of deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with the deadly HIV virus.

The European Union and the United States have joined Bulgaria in denouncing the sentences as unacceptable. Libya, which has forged closer ties with the west in the past year, had promised a quick solution to the issue.

"Cancelling the death penalty should not be the result of economic, political or security pressures like the ones piled on Turkey to win a European Union membership," Mr Gaddafi said.

Such a decision "is linked to progress... in society. It is one of the fruits of a civilised mind", he said in a speech to a gathering of judges, lawyers, law university teachers and students.

Mr Gaddafi said he had made similar pleas to the top executive and legislative body, but it had so far refused to accept them.

"I had decided to cancel that penalty but the People's Congress did not accept it because they are not convinced and also because society has yet to reach a stage of... civilisation to ban the death penalty," he said.