Death Sentence for Medics in Libyan HIV Case

A Libyan court sentenced five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death today for deliberately infecting more than 400 children with HIV.

The verdict came at the end of more than five years of investigations and legal proceedings that have come under sharp criticism from international observers.

The European Union, which seeks to admit Bulgaria in its next wave of expansion, said it was shocked by the court's decision. Spokesman Diego de Ojeda said there had been "severe irregularities" in terms of the rights of defence.

Bulgaria condemned the "unfair and absurd" verdicts and called for a strong reaction from the EU, Nato and the United States.

The case began in 1999 with the arrest of the medical workers - five Bulgarian nurses and two doctors, a Bulgarian and a Palestinian - after 393 children at the al-Fateh hospital in Benghazi were found to have HIV, the virus that causes Aids.

The Bulgarian doctor was sentenced to four years in jail.

It was originally alleged that the Bulgarians had entered into a conspiracy to experiment on Libyan children and destabilise the state. But those charges were dropped in 2002 and the case moved from a national security court to an ordinary criminal court.

At least 48 children who were in the hospital have died and some have gone on to infect their families.

Brian Cowen, the Irish foreign minister, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, told his Libyan counterpart that Europe had serious concerns about the trial. The two men spoke on the margins of a meeting in Dublin today to further cooperation between the bloc and North African nations.

The EU had hoped the Libyan leader, Muammar Gadafy, would order the case dropped in order to further his country's links with the west. The Libyan foreign minister, Abdul Rahman Shalghan, insisted at the Dublin meeting that his government could not overrule the independent judiciary, but added that national law allowed for an automatic appeal.

The case was emotive in Libya, where it has been viewed straightforwardly as the trial of seven people accused of infecting 393 children with the HIV virus, rather than an indication of how far Col Gadafy will go to boost his standing with the west.

"The verdict is fair. What they did is a crime against humanity. They planted a bomb inside our children," said Ramdane Ali Mohammed, whose sister Hiba died of Aids.

Internationally-renowned Aids experts have put the blame for the April 1997 to March 1999 outbreak on poor hygiene at the hospital, and defence lawyers have raised serious concerns about the conduct of the investigation, including allegations of confessions extracted under torture.

The case against the medical workers rests largely on a rejection of evidence from Professor Luc Montagnier, the French Aids expert who first identified HIV. Prof Montagnier told the trial that poor hygiene and the re-use of infected medical materials such as needles was the most likely cause of the infection.

He said that analysis of blood samples came out "strongly against" the possibility that the disease had spread through deliberate infection. It also emerged in the trial that two of the accused did not work in the hospital.

Two of the female defendants have also claimed that they were sexually abused in police custody.

Nurse Kristiyana Vulcheva said in a 2001 hearing that she had been beaten and "subjected to the kinds of torture known since the middle ages". Palestinian Ashraf al-Hadjudj said he was tortured before and after making a videotaped confession that took three takes to film.

Families of the medics were stunned and refused to talk to the media. But the speaker of Bulgaria's parliament, Ognyan Gerdzhikov, told his country's national radio that he was confident the death sentences would not be carried out.

"First, they can be appealed. Secondly, Libya has not executed death sentences in nine years, and I'd be very surprised if they start now. Thirdly, I expect Gaddafy to act like a humanist to win certain political credit, which he needs from world public opinion," he said.