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| Africa: North |
| Six Bulgarian Medics Sentenced to Death in Libya |
| 2004-05-06 |
| A Libyan court sentenced six Bulgarian medics to death on Thursday on charges that they intentionally infected more than 400 children with the AIDS virus. International observers had been monitoring the trial in the coastal city of Benghazi, where the Bulgarians - five nurses and a doctor - were employed at a hospital when they were arrested in February 1999. Bulgaria has claimed they have been tortured in Libyan custody. Prosecutors demanded death sentences, accusing the Bulgarians of intentionally infecting the children with HIV-contaminated blood as part of an experiment to find a cure for AIDS. Twenty-three of the children reportedly have since died of AIDS. As soon as the sentence was announced, five relatives of the infected children shouted: "Allahu Akbar!" "I thank god for this sentence," said Abdel Razek al-Odaibi, a father of an infected child. "If there is a greater sentence than death, I would have wished it for them" Al-Odaibi brought his infected son, Akram, 6, to court. He was infected when he was 12 months old. Human rights groups have claimed that Libya concocted that story to cover up poor safety in its medical clinics. Libya initially claimed the infections were part of a conspiracy by the CIA and Israeli intelligence - though it has backed away from those allegations. All six had pleaded innocent, and experts for the defense have argued poor hygiene likely led to the contamination. Dr. Luc Montagnier, the French researcher who co-discovered the AIDS virus, testified that the contamination happened in 1997 - more than a year before the Bulgarians were hired to work there. But a commission of court-appointed Libyan doctors rejected the Western expert’s testimony. The head of the five-judge panel that heard the case, Fadallah el-Sherif, announced the sentencing. The speaker of Bulgaria’s parliament, Ognyan Gerdzhikov, said that the verdicts will be appealed. Under Libyan law, people to condemned to death automatically have the right to appeal. The European Union, Amnesty International and other organizations have criticized the proceedings, and Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Pasi claims the medics were tortured. The suspects have said they were jolted with electricity, beaten with sticks and repeatedly jumped on while strapped to their beds. Two of the women said they were raped. Late last month, European Commission President Romano Prodi met with Gadhafi and raised the issue of the Bulgarians. Prodi later said he was "fully confident that we will see in the next few weeks satisfactory solutions," though there was no sign whether Gadhafi would interfere. |
| Posted by:TS(vice girl) |