FACTBOX: Profiles of foreign medics in Libyan HIV case

(Reuters) - Libya on Tuesday lifted the death sentences on five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor convicted of infecting children with HIV, paving the way for them to be freed after eight years in jail.

Following are profiles of the six:

* SNEZHANA DIMITROVA: Aged 54. Formerly a nurse in Sofia, she suffered a nervous breakdown in 2005 and broke her leg last year.

-- Dimitrova, jailed six months after her arrival at the Al-Fateh hospital in 1998, says it is inconceivable a nurse and mother could commit the crime of which she is accused. She has a daughter, Polina, and a son Ivailo.

* VALIA CHERVENIASHKA: Aged 52. Cherveniashka began working in Benghazi in February 1998. She says she was beaten by Libyan guards but did not confess to infecting the children.

-- Her husband, Emil Uzunov, staged a hunger strike in 2003 at the Libyan embassy in Sofia. He and Cherveniashka's two daughters have criticised Sofia's handling of the case, saying dozens of nationals from Poland, Thailand and other countries were also arrested but later released.

* NASYA NENOVA: Aged 41. After working as a nurse for five years in Bulgaria, she travelled to work in Libya in February 1998 and was jailed around a year later.

-- She tried to kill herself after, she said, she was tortured with electric shocks in jail. Her son Radoslav was a schoolboy when she was arrested and is now at university.

* CHRISTIANA VALCHEVA: Aged 48. Worked six years in Sofia hospitals as a nurse before travelling to Benghazi in 1998. Libyan prosecutors say she is the mastermind in the case, basing their evidence on blood bags found in her house in Libya, although she never worked in the children's hospital itself.