wfn.org | WCC NEWS: Grant clemency, WCC asks Gaddafi

["WCC Media" <Media@wcc-coe.org>]

World Council of Churches - News Release
Contact: +41 22 791 6153 +41 79 507 6363 media@wcc-coe.org
For immediate release - 24/05/2005

WCC APPEALS TO LIBYAN LEADER FOR CLEMENCY

Reacting to the verdict of a Libyan court which has condemned to death six
foreign health workers, World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary
Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia has asked H.E. Mu'ammar al-Gaddafi, Leader of the
Revolution, to spare their lives on humanitarian grounds.

The health workers - five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor - have
been convicted of deliberately infecting some 400 children with HIV in an
attempt to find an AIDS cure.

The health workers have protested their innocence and claimed that they
were tortured by the police.

Kobia's 24 May letter to the Libyan leader invokes the WCC's long-standing
opposition to capital punishment as being contrary to "Christian principles of compassion and love dear to all religions".

The full text of the letter follows:

"I write to you on behalf of the World Council of Churches, a fellowship
of 347 member churches from all over the world.

We are deeply disturbed at the sentencing to death of six health workers,
including five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor, by the Court
in Libya. The six health workers who worked at a childrens' hospital in
Benghazi have been charged with causing the death of 40 children and of
infecting almost 400 others with HIV.

The World Council of Churches is opposed to capital punishment. 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. The capital punishment operates against the
Christian principles of compassion and love dear to all religions. As
long-standing advocate for the abolishment of capital punishment the
Council has consistently 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.

We therefore appeal to your Excellency on humanitarian grounds to grant
clemency and spare the lives of Kristiana Vulcheva, Nasya Nenova,
Valentina Siropulo, Valya Chervenyashka, Snezhana Dimitrova and Ashraf
al-Hajuj.

WCC member churches throughout the world would appreciate the gesture of
clemency on the part of Your Excellency."

Additional information: Juan Michel,+41 22 791 6153 +41 79 507 6363
media@wcc-coe.org

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The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of churches, now 347, in
more than 120 countries in all continents from virtually all Christian
traditions. The Roman Catholic Church is not a member church but works
cooperatively with the WCC. The highest governing body is the assembly,
which meets approximately every seven years. The WCC was formally
inaugurated in 1948 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Its staff is headed by
general secretary Samuel Kobia from the Methodist church in Kenya.