SOFIA, 7 July 2006 — The defense team for five Bulgarian nurses accused of infecting more than 400 Libyan children with HIV-tainted blood claims psychological torture measures were used against the nurses, Bulgarian newspapers reported yesterday.
According to reports in the dailies Trud and 24 tchassa, confirmed to AFP by Bulgarian Foreign Ministry spokesman Dimitar Tsanchev, the defense gave the court in Tripoli a list of 211 instances in which the nurses were subjected to psychological pressure.
The torture claims were “particularly important to disprove the accusations” made against the five women, Tsanchev said.
The nurses, who along with a Palestinian doctor have spent seven years in detention, were sentenced to death by firing squad in May 2004 for “knowingly” causing an AIDS epidemic in a children’s hospital in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi.
During police interrogations, two of the nurses apparently confessed but they later testified in court that they had done so under duress and appealed the ruling.
Libya’s Supreme Court then quashed the death sentence and ordered a retrial, the latest hearing of which was held Tuesday in Tripoli before the case was adjourned to July 25.
The five nurses also filed civil suits against ten Libyan police officers accusing them of physical torture but the Tripoli Appeal Court acquitted the men in June 2004.
As a result, defense lawyer Plamen Yalnazov chose not to present to court any examples of torture other than psychological, Trud and 24 tchassa reported yesterday.
According to the newspapers, police officers forced the nurses to undress before them, put insects on their bodies and set dogs on them.
The five women were also kept without water and denied sleep in a tiny cell where they had to urinate in a juice box or a plastic bag. And police officers threatened to infect them with AIDS, press reports added. According to the newspapers, Yalnazov based his claim on the UN’s Istanbul Protocol on torture and degrading treatment which says psychological torture is a crime. He has demanded a psychological assessment to prove the nurses suffered trauma. Prosecutors in the new trial underway in Tripoli have maintained charges against the five women and the doctor for having “spread an epidemic” that infected over 400 children, 52 of whom have died of AIDS.
