Libya sentences foreign health workers to death

Associated Press
Tuesday December 19, 2006
Guardian Unlimited


Bulgarian medics Nasia Nenova (r), Snezana Dimitrova (c) and Palestinian doctor Ashraf Hajjuj, behind bars during their retrial in Libya. Photograph: Mahmud Turkia/AFP/Getty Images

A Libyan court today condemned to death five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor after finding them guilty of deliberately infecting 400 children with the HIV virus.

The presiding judge, Mahmoud Hawissa, read out the verdict in a seven-minute hearing in a Tripoli court at the end of the defendants' second trial.

The six defendants, detained for nearly seven years, had previously been convicted and condemned to death, but Libyan judges granted them a retrial after international protests over the fairness of the proceedings. Bulgaria contends the children were infected by unhygienic practices at their Libyan hospital.

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The accused now have the right to appeal to the Libyan supreme court.

The long trial of the six foreign medical workers has become a bone of contention in Libyan leader Muammar Gadafy's efforts to rebuild ties with the west. The European Union and the United States have called for their release, indicating that future relations with Libya would be affected by the verdict.

But Libyans strongly supported a conviction. Relatives of the infected children - about 50 of whom have already died of Aids - waited outside the court early today, holding poster-sized pictures of their children and bearing placards that read "Death for the children killers" and "HIV made in Bulgaria".

When the supreme court ordered a retrial in December 2005, friends and relatives rioted in Benghazi - the Libyan city where the children were infected in a state hospital.

Bulgarians will be extremely disappointed by Tuesday's verdict. Hundreds of people staged peaceful protests in support of the five nurses yesterday in Bulgaria. The EU, the US and international rights groups have accused Libya of prosecuting the six foreign staff as scapegoats.

Luc Montagnier - the French doctor who was a co-discoverer of HIV - testified in the first trial that the deadly virus was active in the hospital before the Bulgarian nurses began their contracts there in 1998.