LIBYA/BULGARIA: Libyan court sentencs five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death for deliberately infecting hundreds of children with the HIV virus

A Libyan court on Tuesday (December 19) found five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor guilty of infecting hundreds of children with the HIV virus that causes AIDS and sentenced them all to death. The verdict and sentences were announced by judge Mahmoud Haouissa. The six are accused of intentionally infecting 426 Libyan children with HIV at a hospital in Benghazi in the late 1990s. The prosecution had demanded the death penalty. The judge read out the sentence to the courtroom, "The court has sentenced the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eleventh (of the accused) in their presence, and the rest of them in absentia," he said. "Firstly, regarding the criminal aspect (of the case), the court has decreed that each of Ashraf Ahmad al-Hajoul, Kristiana Malinova Vulcheva, Nasia Stoitcheva Nenova, Valentina Manolova Siropulo, Valia Georgieva Cherveniashka and Snezhana Ivanova Dimitrova should be punished with execution for the crime attributed to them of causing an illness by spreading harmful germs and causing the death of more than one person. The court orders that the verdict be published by pasting up a summary of it in the area where it was issued, the area where the crime was committed and the area in which the perpetrators last resided. It also orders that the verdict be published twice in the al-Fajr al-Jadeed and al-Shams wa al-Adalah newspapers at the expense of those who have been sentenced," said the judge. But Justice Minister Ali Omar Hassaoui said on Tuesday that the six would get a chance to appeal to Libya's Supreme Court against their conviction. Bulgaria condemned the death sentences on five of its nationals and a Palestinian doctor. Sofia demanded Libya's leadership intervene in the case and called on the international community to put pressure on the north African state, which is trying to thaw ties with the West after three decades of diplomatic isolation. "We appeal to the international community to categorically condemn the court's decision," Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev and President Georgi Parvanov said in a joint statement. "And we appeal to the Libyan authorities to immediately become involved in the name of justice ... reject these absurd sentences, and free the nurses and the Palestinian doctor." It is the second time the medics have been condemned to death on the same charges. They were first sentenced to face a firing squad in 2004, but that verdict was overturned last year. The families of the infected children, over 50 of whom have died, have demanded 10 million euros (13.10 million U.S. dollars) in compensation for each child -- "blood money" under which the relatives would be able to quash the verdicts. Bulgaria and its allies have refused to pay, saying that doing so would be an admission of guilt. But, together with Brussels and Washington, it is trying to arrange medical aid, living expenses and treatment in Western hospitals for the families, which analysts say could appease the Libyans and prompt the medics' release. The families of the nurses, who have been jailed since 1999, were distraught. Zorka Anachkova, mother of nurse Kristiana Vulcheva, said the sentence came as no surprise. "I expected this sentence, because it is most convenient for Libya. To keep the hostages, for the world to give them help, medical equipment, this is fine for them, so they just prolong the trial," she said. The United States and the European Union, which Bulgaria joins on January 1, say Libya must let the nurses go, pointing to evidence they were tortured to confess and that the outbreak at the Benghazi hospital began before they started working there. Analysts say freeing them would speed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's rapprochement. But it could outrage the victims' families in Benghazi, a bastion of anti-Gaddafi dissent, and put a spotlight on a dilapidated Libyan medical system that Western scientists say is the real culprit for the tragedy.

ITN Source | December 19, 2006

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