BULGARIA/FILE: Bulgaria to try Libyan police officers on charges of torturing nurses accused of infecting children with HIV

Bulgarian prosecutors say they will try in absentia 11 Libyan police officers accused of torturing five Bulgarian nurses. The police officers will be charged with forcing the nurses to admit to infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV. Bulgaria will try 11 Libyan police officers on charges of torturing Bulgarian nurses to obtain confessions to deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV, a senior prosecutor said on Wednesday (January 31). Sofia is preparing to press charges against the police officers in absentia within four months. In a highly politicised case which started eight years ago, a Libyan court in December sentenced the nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death for starting an HIV epidemic in a hospital in the eastern town of Benghazi. The Libyan prosecution based its case mainly on confessions from some of the nurses who say they are innocent and were beaten and tortured to admit guilt. European Union newcomer Bulgaria and its allies in Brussels and Washington have decried the verdicts as unfair and have stepped up diplomatic pressure on Tripoli to release them. "We are going to investigate and confirm all details about alleged torture in the process of this investigation," Sofia city prosecutor, Nikolai Kokinov said on Wednesday. Kokinov said there was enough data to try the Libyans who possibly made the nurses confess to infecting 426 children with HIV through torture and violence. Bulgaria will ask Libya for its cooperation in the trial, but said they would go ahead with prosecuting the police officers regardless of Libya's reply. "We are going to ask the Libyan authorities for cooperation to interrogate the defendants, but if they refuse and we cannot oblige them, we are going to do the investigation in their absence," Kokinov said. One of the nurses, Nasya Nenova has said she attempted to kill herself in prison because she could not stand torture with electric shocks. Snezhana Dimitrova testified in 2001 that she had dislocated her shoulder after being hung from a doorway by her arms, hands tied behind her back. Tripoli tried nine Libyan policemen and a physician on charges of torture and acquitted them in June 2005. The nurses' defence lawyers have said the women will be questioned on February 11 on accusations they have defamed the Libyan police officers by testifying against them. The news of the possible new trial against the nurses, in jail since 1999, has sparked sharp criticism in Bulgaria. Many Bulgarians say that today's actions come too late. "The idea of taking the torturers to court is fine, but it is too late. Where was our prosecution and our governments the last seven years? They did not do anything except take care of their image. This is a huge crime on behalf of our prosecutors and government. They did not care for their jobs and missed all opportunities the last seven years, they left our helpless nurses to be tortured and tormented," painter from Sofia, Yordan Shentov said. Sofia news agency, novinite.com, reported that if the Libyan police officers are found guilty, they face up to six years in jail and if the prosecutors find it suitable the sentence might be served in Bulgaria.

ITN Source | February 1, 2007

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