June 21
LIBYA/BULGARIA:
Bulgarian Medics in Libya May Be Left to Mercy of Infected Childrens
Parents: Official
Libya may pardon 5 Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor it has
sentenced to death for allegedly infecting hundreds of children with the
AIDS virus only if families of the children ask for clemency, a report
said Monday.
The medics are now appealing their verdict at Libyas Supreme Court.
They will be left entirely to the mercy of the infected childrens parents
if the court confirms the death sentences, state TV quoted Council of
Europe Secretary General Walter Schwimmer as saying.
In a letter to Bulgarian lawmakers Schwimmer said Libyan Foreign Minister
Abdel Rahman Mohammed Shalgham gave him these clarifications during a
recent discussion they had at a meeting of the Organization Islamic
Conference in Turkeys city of Istanbul.
According to Schwimmer, Schalgham added Libya would appreciate aid from
Bulgaria and Europe to help it tackle its AIDS problem.
It was not clear when the Supreme Court would rule on the medics appeals.
A criminal court in the coastal city of Benghazi has sentenced them to a
firing squad last May 6 on charges of intentionally injecting blood and
blood products contaminated with the HIV virus that causes AIDS to 426
children at a local hospital.
Libya says that 40 children have already died of AIDS and more than a
dozen of mothers have contracted the lethal virus.
The court has ignored a report by HIV co-discoverer French doctor Luc
Montagnier and Italian AIDS expert Dr. Vittorio Collizzi, who testified
the HIV infection had spread in the hospital due to bad hygiene before it
hired the medics in 1997.
In court the nurses have renounced confessions of guilt, saying Libyan
police extorted them by severe tortures, which included electric jolts,
beatings and rapes.
A report in the Sofia daily 24 Chasa has said the court based its verdict
solely on confessions one of the nurses and the doctor made after being
tortured. It rejected Montagnier and Collizzis report as "scientifically
groundless" and "failing to identify the cause of the contagion."
Bulgaria has won wide international support for its efforts to reverse the
verdicts, which it has branded "unfair and absurd."
(source: Bulgarian News Network)
