A Libyan court on Thursday sentenced to death six Bulgarian medics and a Palestinian doctor after convicting them of infecting more than 400 children with the AIDS virus, report agencies
The court in the city of Benghazi found the Bulgarian medics, five nurses and a doctor, guilty of infecting 426 children with the HIV virus during blood transfusions at the Al Fateh hospital.
The six Bulgarians, detained more than five years ago, were accused of deliberately infecting some 400 Libyan children with HIV. Libyan children holding placards reading "Thank you for the AIDS" and "we want justice" stood in front of the court while the sentences were announced. Parents and relatives of the victims said they would settle for nothing less than the death sentence.
However, the world's top AIDS experts, including the co-discoverer of the HIV virus French doctor Luc Montagnier, have testified that the Bulgarians could not have caused the infection as it had started before the hospital hired them in 1997, said Bulgarian media reports. The experts said that bad hygiene most likely caused the contagion. The US and the European Union, with whom Libya is trying to mend relations, have urged it to drop the charges.
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