Foreigners Get Death In Libyan AIDS Case :: Namibia Internet Gateway cc ::

Articles: Foreigners Get Death In Libyan AIDS Case

Posted by admin on Friday, May 07, 2004 - 12:43 AM

BENGHAZI, Libya, May 6 -- A Libyan court sentenced five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian physician Thursday to death by firing squad after convicting them of deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV.
Bulgaria condemned as "unfair and absurd" the verdicts announced by court officials and was joined in outrage by its Western partners, the United States and European Union . The case has been a major obstacle to Libya joining an EU economic partnership with Mediterranean region countries. Libya's leader, Moammar Gaddafi, who is seeking closer ties with the West after more than a decade of international isolation, had promised to resolve the dispute swiftly during a visit to EU headquarters in Brussels last week. The condemned, detained in February 1999, were convicted of infecting 426 Libyan children at a Benghazi hospital with blood products contaminated with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. They pleaded not guilty, insisting that the epidemic that Libyan officials say has killed more than 40 children since 1999 started before they began work at the hospital. Prosecutors charged them with "uncontrollable murder aimed at destabilizing the country, deliberately starting an epidemic . . . and conspiring to intentionally infect children with the AIDS virus." In 2001 Gaddafi said the children were infected as part of an experiment ordered by the U.S. or Israeli secret services. Bulgaria, tentatively cleared to enter the EU in 2007, has called the trial unfair, saying there was no hard evidence except for confessions from two nurses who were held without legal assistance for a year before being indicted. Nine Libyans have been on trial for torturing the confessions out of them. Zdravko Georgiev, a Bulgarian doctor and the husband of one of the nurses, was sentenced to four years in jail but was released Thursday on time served. "I'm not happy at the moment. I cannot feel free because I left behind six innocent people," Georgiev told Bulgarian television after his release. Scores of dancing and chanting relatives of the HIV-infected children took to the streets near the court in Benghazi after the verdicts were announced. "The verdict is fair. What they did is a crime against humanity. They planted a bomb inside our children," said Ramdane Ali Mohamed, whose younger sister, Hiba, died of AIDS-related causes. In Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, several hundred somber demonstrators staged a candlelight vigil for the condemned. "It's not possible for a normal person, let alone a nurse, to do such a thing," said Nina Taneva, 57. In Brussels, the European Commission said it was "deeply disappointed" at the verdict, while the State Department called it unacceptable. Amnesty International also condemned the verdict . The speaker of the Bulgarian parliament, Ognyan Gerdzhikov, said he was confident the 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 Gaddafi to act like a humanist to win certain political credit which he needs from world public opinion," he said on national radio. Last year Luc Montagnier, the French doctor credited with discovering HIV, said the epidemic emerged in the Libyan hospital in 1997, a year before the foreign medical workers arrived. He testified that the children were most probably infected through negligence and poor hygiene.

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