TRIPOLI, 20 December 2006 — Six foreign medics face execution by firing squad or hanging after being convicted by a Libyan court yesterday of deliberately infecting hundreds of children with the AIDS virus.
The death sentence against the five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor detained for the past seven years was greeted with shock and outrage in the international community but with cheers by relatives of the victims. The defendants — from behind bars in the dock — burst into tears on hearing the verdict while the families of sick or dead victims celebrated, singing and dancing outside the heavily-protected Tripoli court.
Defense lawyer Othman Bizanti told journalists an appeal would be filed before Libya’s Supreme Court within the legal time limit of 60 days, in the last recourse open to the medics.
The accused were charged with infecting 426 children with HIV while they worked at Al-Fateh Hospital in the Mediterranean city of Benghazi. More than 50 have since died. All six had pleaded not guilty.
Bulgaria said it categorically rejected the “absurd” death sentences and called on Libyan authorities to intervene.
“The whole court case was compromised and covers up the real cause that sparked the AIDS epidemic in Benghazi,” said a joint statement by Bulgarian President Georgy Parvanov and Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev.
The European Union presidency condemned the sentence and appealed for clemency. “The presidency expects that the Higher Court of Justice will enable a just, equitable and humanitarian solution in this case,” it said.
EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini said he was “shocked” and warned the ruling could damage ties between Tripoli and Brussels. The medics, first detained in 1999, had already been sentenced in May 2004 to face a firing squad before the Supreme Court ordered a retrial following a December 2005 appeal.
And Libya’s Justice Minister Ali Al-Hasnawi suggested it may not be the end of the case.
“Libyan justice offers the accused the possibility of a complete revision of the case. The Supreme Court can modify, reduce or annul the verdict,” he told a press conference.
Christiana Malinova Valcheva, Valia Georgieva Cherveniashka, Nasia Stoitcheva Nenova, Valentina Manolova Siropulo and Snezhana Ivanova Dimitrova, were convicted along with the doctor, Ashraf Ahmad Juma.
“I am happy with the verdict, which shows the impartiality of the Libyan justice system,” Abullah Moghrabi, lawyer for the families, told AFP.
The court also ordered the Libyan state to pay the families between $250,000 and $900,000 for each victim.
Relatives carried portraits of dead or sick children outside the courthouse as security forces fired into the air to keep the crowd at bay.
“Death to the children killers!” read one banner, while a child’s picture asked, “Why me?” Eight-year-old Nuri Al-Orfi yesterday became the latest victim to die of the disease, according to a family member, raising the overall death toll to 53.
Families of the dead children had demanded $15 million in compensation for each lost youngster — a claim rejected by the Bulgarian government.
The case has strained relations between Tripoli and the West as the North African state works its way back into the international fold after renouncing in 2003 its efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction.
Defense lawyers argued that the children had been infected with HIV — the virus that brings on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome — before the nurses began working at the hospital.
In November, British medical journal The Lancet — in an editorial entitled “Free the Benghazi Six” — blasted the retrial as a miscarriage of justice with “no legal foundation.”
