Two and a half years after the beginning of the trial of six Bulgarian health professionals in Tripoli, there have been only incidental reports in the Arab and Western media. The bottom line in the Western papers is, generally, that the allegations of deliberate infection of the Libyan children with the AIDS virus as part of a conspiracy involving the Bulgarians, are groundless. The Arab mass media in general and the Libyan in particular do not go further than give brief reports on the trial and echo official assurances for a transparent and just trial.

The first story on the trial was published in The Washington Times on June 14, 2000 – over a year after the beginning of the trial. The paper would not commit itself to a clear stand or express any explicit opinion and used only Bulgarian sources. It quoted the Bulgarian Ambassador to the US, Filip Dimitrov,  who calls attention to the possible violations of the legal rights of the six accused Bulgarians and expresses hope that the evidence will be truthfully presented.

The first reports in the European press appeared in the French Liberation (June 2, 2000) and the Swiss Neuer Zuercher Zeitung (July 11, 2000). The two headlines give an identical assessment of the events in Libya: “Bulgarians as Scapegoats” (NZZ) and “Child Killers or Libya’s Scapegoats” (Liberation).

Liberation says that sanitary control in Libya is not particularly good and there is not sufficient epidemiological data on the spread of AIDS in that country. The paper sees the trial as part of several possible scenarios: in one it is actually against a ring trafficking in blood plasma; or else the HIV infections are a result of medical negligence and the Bulgarian defendants are scapegoats to appease the infected children’s parents.

NZZ is positive that Tripoli has earmarked the Bulgarians as scapegoats in the HIV scandal in Benghazi. The author talks about confessions extracted under duress, about forged evidence and infringement on the procedural rights of the defendants. “Apart from the depositions under torture, the most overwhelming evidence is the mysterious bottles containing contaminated blood plasma. One such bottle was allegedly found by the Libyan police during a search of the house of one of the detained nurses, but it happened only during the fourth search of the said house. A TV crew had been called to film the sensational find in the nurse’s fridge. The report was never shown on Libyan TV. At a later stage the one blood plasma bottle multiplied into five,” writes NZZ.

According to the Swiss paper, the government in Sofia limits itself to action through diplomatic channels, obviously leaving no opportunity unused. “It does not argue that the Bulgarian defendants are innocent a priori and only insists that their guilt or innocence be established by the Libyan authorities in a fair trial and in compliance with the mandatory diplomatic and legal standards,” the NZZ author says.

The paper runs as a separate item an interview with Geneva-based virologist Luc Perrin who has examined HIV-positive children of the Benghazi hospital. Prof. Perrin tells NZZ that the Benghazi outbreak was a typical case of nosocomial infection, i.e. originating in the hospital. This may be attributed to insufficient preventive measures and staff underqualification but not to criminal activity, says Prof. Perrin.

This year the Libyan trial drew more media attention and the speech the Libyan leader Col. Muammar Qaddafi gave at the AIDS conference in Abuja, Nigeria, was followed by stories clearly saying that the trial is political.

For David Holley of Los Angeles Times, “it all sounds too bizarre for anyone to take seriously, but for six Bulgarian medical workers imprisoned in Libya, outlandish accusations by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi about a plot to spread AIDS are no joke.” The author refers to Colonel Qaddafi’s accusations at the AIDS conference and says that the analogy he made between the Tripoli trial and the Lockerbie case gives “a possible clue to his motivations”. The paper further quotes former Bulgarian foreign minister Nadezhda Mihailova as saying that Qaddafi is seeking political dividends in the trial against the Bulgarians, and suggests that the attacks against CIA and Mossad are used to divert attention from the real target of the Libyan authorities: the Benghazi opposition.

According to Christian Science Monitor, “the charges sound farfetched, like something out of a cold-war spy novel”. The author quotes Mohamed Kasim, secretary general of the Netherlands-based Union of Libyan Human Rights Defenders, who says that Libyan “public anger about the children and poor medical services in general means someone needs to be held responsible”, and “foreign culprits make the most convenient scapegoat”.

While most papers dismiss Qaddafi’s conspiratorial theory about a CIA/Mossad plot against Libya, former Russian spy Viktor Suvorov goes one step further and gets KGB involved as well. Suvorov said on Radio Free Europe that the theory about CIA creating HIV and letting it loose in Africa had been invented by the KGB and is still used by the Russian secret services. He said further that the Tripoli trial serves the interests of Moscow and forces in Russia struggling to preserve the Russian influence in the former Soviet colonies. Qaddafi’s alleged aim is to break the severe isolation of his country and go back to Moscow.

The claims of a Russian connection in the trial were picked up by the Balkan media, where the first story on the case appeared in May 2001. Two Greek newspapers, Athinaiki and Ependitis, ran stories heavily based on Suvorov’s claims and saying that the Tripoli trial involves three countries: Bulgaria, Libya and Russia. According to Ependitis, Colonel Qaddafi wants to keep up tension during the elections in Bulgaria and left this situation with Moscow.

Suvorov was also quoted in the Serbian newspaper Vreme. According to the author, with his speech in Abuja Muammar Qaddafi doubtlessly gave the trial against the Bulgarians a political dimension and largely predetermined the outcome. The Belgrade paper also suggests that the AIDS trial is a move in the propaganda war of Libya.

On July 1, the influential Washington Post ran a lengthy story but the author, Peter Finn, avoids making any explicit commentary. However, he quotes foreign experts who dismiss the allegations of the Libyan prosecutor of a conspiracy and deliberate infection. Prof. Luc Perrin told Finn that “the case of the Libyan government doesn’t stand” and World Health Organization (WHO) spokesperson Melinda Henry said that members of WHO missions in Libya in 1998 and 1999 felt that further study was necessary to identify the source of the HIV infections, but they “were not invited back.”

The reluctance of the Libyan authorities to allow alternative studies on the outbreak became the subject of an investigation by Italian journalist Maria Pace Ottieri. Ottieri’s story was published in Diario on May 17, 2001. She writes that some 190 Libyan children are undergoing treatment in three Italian clinics. The official information provided by the hospitals is that they “have been infected in various circumstances” and Italian doctors would not disclose more details because of some confidentiality arrangements with the Libyan authorities. Ottieri’s view is that Qaddafi is trying to hush down the scandal, fearing that it might worsen further Libya’s reputation and trigger an outcry inside the country. Italy is the country where Qaddafi has made the largest investment. He owns a filling station and a share in Banca di Roma and is after a stake in the petrochemical company EMI. According to Ottieri, Italy, too, is interested in winning over the Libyan Colonel to pave the way for more business opportunities for itself. She recalls that former Italian prime minister Massimo D’Alema was the first European statesman to visit Libya after the hand-over of the suspects in the Lockerbie bombing.

The author describes the trial of the Bulgarians as “frightfully shady”. She has found that one Libyan doctor, who had cooperated with French medical experts investigating the Benghazi infections, was arrested this year. “The investigation of the experts of the Institut Pasteur could have proven that the infections resulted from negligence or poor sanitary control and not a premeditated murder,” Ottieri says. She goes on to quote Paola Nasca of the Italian Anti-AIDS League, according to whom the case of the Libyan prosecution is “a far cry from the truth”. The author concludes that the Bulgarians have probably been singled out as scapegoats to curb growing internal indignation over the crisis and the problems in medical services.

The view that the Benghazi infections have been the product of poor hygiene and negligence, which is widely shared by the Western press, was first expressed by the Libyan magazine La long before the Bulgarians went on trial. La’s was the only investigative report on the case in the Arab mass media. In a story of November 1998, the magazine describes the picture in the Benghazi hospital as “a real medical disaster” and details all irregularities, including shortage of consumables, multiple use of disposable instruments and syringes, poor hygiene.

La quotes Libyan Health Minister Suleyman al-Ghamari as speaking about irregular supply of consumables to hospitals. Fathers of children who have got AIDS in the hospital tell the magazine that the hospital refuses to make HIV tests and whenever it makes them it is reluctant to disclose the results to the patient. The author says in conclusion that poor hygiene and refusal to say who the HIV-positive children are have allowed the infection get out of control.

Shortly after the scandal in 1998 that surfaced when a group of embittered fathers addressed openly Muammar Qaddafi, the secret services started an inquiry at the Benghazi Hospital and La was closed down.

The first two years after the opening of the trial passed without a single mention in the Libyan media. Only after Qaddafi’s speech in Abuja and his decision to make it an international trial, things changes, and the Libyan media reported the May 13 court hearing with brief items on TV and in the Al-Jamahiriya and Al Fajir al Jadid newspapers.

Other Arab periodicals, such as the Islamic magazine Khilafa, the Kuwaiti Al Watan and the Egyptian Al Ahram, wrote about the trial but would not make any comments. Reporting the Egyptian visit of then Bulgarian Prime Minister Ivan Kostov, Al Ahram said that Kostov asked Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to try talk Colonel Qaddafi into releasing the Bulgarian medical workers. Mubarak was expected to raise the issue during Qaddafi’s visit to Cairo in October 2000, the paper says.

The only clear position on the Tripoli trial ever taken by an Arab journalist is that of the Sofia correspondent of Al Watan, Mohammed Khalaf. Not in his own paper but in Sofia’s Standart News, Khalaf said that it is preposterous to claim that the trial won’t be just and that the court won’t be impartial.

More samples of foreign media coverage of the trial:

Another test for Gadhafi: Fate of medics accused of
spreading AIDS in Libya has a nation on edge
By WILLIAM J. KOLE
Associated Press Writer


SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) It's a legal drama that has held Bulgaria on edge for half a decade _ six Bulgarian medics accused of deliberately infecting 400 Libyan children with AIDS in what Moammar Gadhafi once called a U.S.-Israeli plot to undermine his regime.

A verdict could come as early as Monday, and the defendants could get the death penalty, but some Bulgarians hope Gadhafi will pardon them as part of his newly emerging effort to make peace with the West.

"They're innocent," said Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Pasi, who has met with Gadhafi three times since the trial began in February 1999. Their fate, Pasi told The Associated Press in an interview, "is on the top of my mind every single minute."

"These five years have passed like a bad dream," says Marian Georgiev, son of the only male among the accused, Dr. Zdarvko Georgiev.

"They are all pessimistic and desperate. We think of them as hostages."

Prosecutors have demanded death sentences, insisting the medics intentionally infected the children with HIV-contaminated blood.

The trial before the criminal court in the coastal city of Benghazi is nearing its end as Gadhafi seeks to end decades as an international pariah. He recently renounced weapons of mass destruction, opened his programs to international inspection and was reported to have made contact with Israel, a longtime enemy.

Libya has agreed to pay damages to relatives of passengers killed in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and of a French jetliner the following year.

Libyan authorities have backed away from Gadhafi's initial allegations that the infections were part of a conspiracy by the CIA and Israeli intelligence. They now say the six were experimenting with a cure when they infected the youngsters, some of whom since have died.

But that isn't much help to the Bulgarian defendants.

"The Bulgarians have to prove they are innocent when the presumption of innocence is a basic principle of justice around the world," said Ivan Nenov, husband of nurse Nasya Nenova. "It is monstrous to hold this trial based on such an approach."

For many Bulgarians, any doubts were laid to rest last autumn with an outside assessment by Dr. Luc Montagnier, the French co-discoverer of the AIDS virus.

Montagnier said poor hygiene at the Benghazi hospital likely led to the contamination, and that it happened in 1997 more than a year before the Bulgarians were hired to work there.

Dr. Ivo Raychev, a Sofia neurologist who spent a year in Libya in the late 1990s, described abysmal conditions.

"They have no concept of sterilization and how dangerous reusing needles can be," he said.

The European Union, Amnesty International and other organizations have criticized the proceedings, and Pasi claims to have a fat dossier of proof that the medics were severely tortured.

The suspects say 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.

The Bulgarian government has asked the six to consider pressing for a World Health Organization inquiry. But the suspects appear torn over whether to prolong their ordeal.

"We're still very confused. We don't know what to do," nurse Valya Chervenyaska told Info Radio, a Bulgarian station, in a telephone interview from her cell.

The Libyans say they have 1,600 pages of evidence including signed confessions, and insist the trial is transparent and fair. Nine Libyan medics also are being tried for negligence, and international observers are monitoring the trial.

There are hopes that even if the six are sentenced to death, the executions will be stayed and a deal reached to let them serve life sentences in a Bulgarian prison.

Nikolai Zhelyazkov, a journalist who has traveled extensively in Libya, doubted a pardon was likely, saying Gadhafi is under enormous pressure from the infected children's families.

"They need to find someone guilty," he said, "and the easiest thing is to say that foreigners did it."

* * *

San Francisco Chronicle,
03-04-2000

A Bulgarian Nightmare In Libya

At a hospital in Benghazi, Libya's second largest city, 393 children contracted the AIDS virus. Twenty-three are said to have died. Libyan authorities determined that blood products were contaminated. On Monday, six Bulgarians -- an anesthetist and five nurses -- are scheduled to go on trial, charged with intentionally infecting the children. The Bulgarians are also accused of plotting against the Libyan state. If convicted under Islamic law, they could be executed. Their Libyan lawyer, Osman Bisanti, is seeking a postponement (the second) and will probably get it because until March 21, he had not seen the 1,600-page indictment. It still has not been translated from Arabic. The defendants did not know the severity of the charges until a week before the original trial date, February 28. The six have been in jail since February 1999. Twenty-three Bulgarians were arrested (and some other non-Arabs, reportedly Poles and Filipinos). But all except the unlucky six were freed after weeks or months; it's a bit murky. The 17 Bulgarians who were released have not been allowed to leave Libya but are expected to get the necessary papers soon. Some may stay. The pay is good; the pay in Bulgaria is bad. Thousands of Bulgarian professionals work in Libya. Why would those six have jeopardized their careers and their lives in an act of collective hatred and madness?

A second question: Why would Libya, which is clearly interested in rapprochement with the West -- and having some success -- risk it with charges that seem implausible? Possible answers: 1) Bulgaria is only semi-West; it's not a place someone in New York, London or Berlin cares about. The six may be convenient scapegoats for Libya's failure to protect its children. 2) Libyan authorities may be genuinely baffled and desperate for an explanation of this horror: Children have died, and more will die. 3) A Bulgarian publication wrote about reused syringes and about cut-rate blood products brought into the hospital by a Libyan doctor who was having an affair with a Bulgarian nurse. (Libyans are also accused in this "conspiracy" but apparently will be tried separately.) Bulgarian media have been outraged that the six Bulgarians were in jail for a year before a high-level delegation went to Tripoli. Attorney Vladimir Cheitanov went along at the behest of the families; he will be able to participate in the defense indirectly. Unfortunately, his name means "devil" in Arabic; the Bulgarian media made a meal of that. According to news reports, the prisoners were allowed to meet the Bulgarian officials but not to speak. Somehow, it was clear that the six wanted cigarettes and clean underwear. Otherwise, they seemed fine. There has been speculation about a deal. Bulgarian President Petar Stoyanov has been in touch with Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy, who has been known to get people out of difficult situations when he has a mind to. Also, Libya owes Bulgaria $500 million. But Bulgarian Foreign Ministry spokesman Radko Vlaikov, reached by phone in Sofia, said he expects the case to proceed. All the Bulgarian government wants, he says, is a fair trial from which the truth can emerge -- then let the chips fall. (The prisoners may not be so sanguine.) Vlaikov said he is sure that the Bulgarian medical personnel did their jobs properly -- and that the Bulgarian government did its job. It was not asleep or uncaring, he says, but has tried to keep the situation cool in the interest of not only the six but also the other Bulgarians working in Libya. Without prejudging the case, the government has tried to let Libya know that a democratic Bulgaria, unlike its former communist self, is concerned about individual citizens: They are not expendable. And that's the problem. Khadafy has to worry about domestic opinion, too. Those children weren't expendable, either.

Washington Times,
13-06-2000

Bulgarians On Trial

Bulgarian Ambassador Philip Dimitrov is raising an alarm in the United States over the Libyan trial of six Bulgarian medics accused of infecting nearly 400 children with the AIDS virus. The trial that was scheduled to begin last week has been postponed to allow a Libyan lawyer more time to prepare a defense for the five nurses and one doctor who face the death penalty if convicted. Bulgaria says the medics were tortured into confessing they deliberately infected 393 Libyan children with the HIV virus, which causes the deadly AIDS disease. "While the . . . opening trial date has been postponed, it is important to call attention to the possible violations of the six accused Bulgarian citizens' legal rights as guaranteed by international law and threats to bilateral agreements between Bulgaria and Libya," the ambassador said in a statement. "It is my hope that this trial allows the Bulgarian defendants a truthful presentation of the evidence to which they are entitled." In February 1999, Libya arrested 19 Bulgarian medics working in a children's hospital in Benghazi, after an investigation into how the children were infected with the virus. Libya later dropped charges against 13 of the medics. The Bulgarian Embassy, in a review of the case, accused Libya of violating the defendants' international legal rights and blocking their ability to prepare a defense. Bulgaria has also complained that Libya has failed to keep its ambassador to Libya and consular officers in Benghazi informed of progress in the case.

* * *

The Christian Science Monitor
May 29, 2001

Bulgaria, Lockerbie, and an AIDS trial in Libya
Trial begins Saturday for six Bulgarians accused of participating in a "Western plot."

By Matthew Brunwasser
Special to The Christian Science Monitor

SOFIA, BULGARIA

The charges sound farfetched, like something out of a cold-war spy novel. But for six Bulgarian medical workers - accused of deliberately infecting 393 children with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, in a plot to destabilize the Libyan government - they are all too real.

A Libyan People's Court, which hears cases involving national security, is set to begin the trial on Saturday. Conviction would mean a death sentence. The Bulgarians - five nurses and a doctor - have been detained since February 1999, along with a Palestinian doctor. Nine Libyans face similar, but lesser charges, including negligence. All are out on bail.

The trial has been delayed 12 times, largely at the request of defense lawyers, who say they have had great difficulty gathering necessary information. Increased international awareness, the lawyers say, may be their clients' best hope.

The long-simmering case comes in the wake of Libya's recent election to a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Commission. It also has become a hot campaign issue in Bulgaria, ahead of June 17 elections.

International and Bulgarian public concern about the legal proceedings were heightened April 27, when Libyan leader Col. Muammar Qaddafi claimed, at a high-profile AIDS conference in Nigeria, that the infections were part of a Western plot.

"Who charged them with this odious task?" the BBC reported him asking. "Some said it was the CIA. Others said it was the Mossad [Israeli intelligence]. They carried out an experiment on these children."

Colonel Qaddafi added that the Bulgarians will have "an international trial, like the Lockerbie trial." A Libyan intelligence officer is appealing his conviction in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. That trial was held under Scottish law at a special court convened at a former US military base in the Netherlands.

"In front of international legal institutions, it would be easier for both sides to defend their cases," says Vladimir Cheytanov, a lawyer hired by the Bulgarians' families. "If someone asks for a second Lockerbie trial, he should provide the same thorough process." Mr. Cheytanov has been allowed to meet his clients only four times in more than a year.

"When I read the indictment, it didn't seem rational," says Krassimir Kanev, chairman of the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee. Mr. Kanev says that every aspect of the case is a human rights concern. "Deprivation of private and family life, lack of judicial independence, long detention, being held incommunicado." The US-based International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission says the proceedings "appear to reflect unchecked and irrational anxieties about the violability of national boundaries and the foreign origins of HIV."

Libyan officials have declined an offer by World Health Organization officials to investigate the hospital in Benghazi where the infections occurred. After expressing concerns to Arab ambassadors in Sofia, Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nadezhda Mihailova told reporters: "Bulgaria cannot and will not accept a political trial against its citizens." The government has requested the presence of Arab League monitors at the trial.

Already, Cheytanov sees evidence that international pressure is having an impact. He says the court had allowed him no legal means to defend his clients - no witnesses, no experts, no questioning of defendants - until the most recent trial date, May 13. In an emotional scene broadcast on Bulgarian television, two defendants told journalists of their torture with electric shocks. One described sharing a cell with 50 other men.

Now, Cheytanov says he will be able to question his clients in court, and later bring witnesses. The court has still not decided whether to allow expert testimony. Libyan public anger about the children and poor medical services in general means someone needs to be held responsible, says Mohamed Kasim, secretary general of the Netherlands-based Union of Libyan Human Rights Defenders. Foreign culprits make the most convenient scapegoat.

"In Libya, there is just one man with his group who controls everything," Mr. Kasim says. "So you can't ask for a fair trial or freedom of speech or international judicial standards."

* * *

LOS ANGELES TIMES
May 10, 2001

Gaddafi's oddball AIDS ploy no joke
By DAVID HOLLEY WARSAW


It all sounds too bizarre for anyone to take seriously, but for six Bulgarian medical workers imprisoned in Libya, outlandish accusations by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi about a plot to spread AIDS are no joke.

A Libyan prosecutor is seeking the death penalty against the five nurses and one doctor, who are charged with intentionally infecting 393 children with the human immunodeficiency virus at a hospital in the Libyan city of Benghazi. The indictment says the Bulgarians sought to undermine the security of the Libyan state. The trial, which opened in February but has repeatedly been adjourned, is scheduled to resume on Sunday. The proceedings in Libya have prompted growing outrage by the government and public in Bulgaria, where the charges are seen as motivated by Colonel Gaddafi's domestic and international political calculations. In a speech to the African summit on HIV/AIDS held in Nigeria in late April, he painted a picture of a vast conspiracy in which the CIA created HIV, the virus that causes AIDS; Western pharmaceutical companies profited from it; and the Bulgarians gave it to Libyan children for experimental purposes, perhaps at the behest of US or Israeli intelligence services.

"This is a catastrophe, an odious crime," Colonel Gaddafi said in remarks to the summit that were broadcast live on Libyan television and translated by the BBC worldwide monitoring service.

The alleged plot was uncovered, Colonel Gaddafi said, after children with AIDS were found in Sirte, Misratah, Sebha, Tripoli and Dirnah. "After examination, we found out that all these children, at one time or another, were treated at the Benghazi children's hospital. They were born, vaccinated or slept there," he said. In a possible clue to his motivations, Colonel Gaddafi vaguely linked the prosecution of the Bulgarians to the recent trial in a Scottish court of two Libyan suspects in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people.

The Bulgarians will face "an international trial, like the Lockerbie trial," Colonel Gaddafi said, without elaborating.

The Scottish court convicted one Lockerbie defendant and acquitted the other. Many observers suspect that Colonel Gaddafi ordered the aircraft's bombing in revenge for a US bombing raid on Libya in 1986 in which two of his sons were wounded and his 15-month-old adopted daughter was killed. Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nadezhda Mikhailova met Arab ambassadors in Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, on Monday to complain that Colonel Gaddafi appeared to be seeking political benefits from the trial of the medical personnel.

"The analogy made with the Lockerbie trial prompts thoughts about political moves aimed at turning the Bulgarian citizens into scapegoats for settling scores with other countries," Mr Mikhailova said after the meeting. "Bulgaria will not accept a political trial against its citizens in Libya. ... We think that putting the trial in the context of experiments ordered by foreign forces - because (Gaddafi's) speech mentions the CIA and Mossad - means politicising the trial."

THE WASHINGTON POST
July 2, 2001

Libya Accuses Foreign Medical Workers

In a case that has troubled human rights activists and the international medical community, six Bulgarians and a Palestinian are facing the death penalty in Libya for allegedly infecting 393 children with the virus that causes AIDS in what Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi claims was a plot orchestrated by the CIA or Israeli intelligence.

A three-day trial, in which the defendants were not allowed to call witnesses or present expert testimony, ended June 18 in Tripoli, Libya, and a verdict is scheduled to be handed down Sept. 22. The seven defendants -- a Bulgarian doctor, a Palestinian doctor and five Bulgarian nurses -- are accused of injecting children with contaminated blood in the pediatric department of the Al-Fateh Hospital in Benghazi in an alleged conspiracy to destabilize the Libyan state. "[The defendants] have sold themselves to the Devil," the lead prosecutor told the court, according to news services. "To these [intelligence] services, child-killing is nothing new. In this way, they want to prevent Libya from playing an important role in the Arab world and to disturb calm in the country. The killing of children by that virus is a means by which those secret services achieve their ends."

The seven health workers, supported by European AIDS experts, said HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, was most likely transmitted through poor medical practices at the hospital, including the routine reuse of unsterilized syringes.

"There is no doubt that the case of the Libyan government doesn't stand," said Luc Perrin, a physician at Geneva University Hospital in Switzerland who examined 37 of the children and tested blood plasma from 122 others that was shipped to him. Other children were seen in Austria, Italy and France after being flown to Europe in 1999 by the Libyan government.

According to Perrin, who said in an interview that he forwarded his finding to the Libyan government and the prosecutor, the most likely scenario is that one child was infected with HIV through a contaminated injection or some other form of transmission, and that led to the "explosive spread" of HIV through reused syringes. He said at least 50 percent of the children he tested were also infected with hepatitis C, which is prevalent in Libya, and 40 percent have hepatitis B, all of which suggests transmission through needles.

Perrin determined that all of the infected patients had received injections while in the hospital in Benghazi, which is east of Tripoli on the Mediterranean Sea. According to the World Health Organization, 80,000 to 160,000 HIV infections occur annually through unsafe injections, mostly in the Third World.

The World Health Organization undertook two missions to Libya in 1998 and 1999 and recommended that universal safety procedures be followed in hospitals there, according to WHO spokeswoman Melinda Henry. Members of the missions felt that further study was necessary to identify the source of the HIV infections, Henry said, but they were not invited back.

Nine Libyans from Al-Fateh Hospital face lesser charges in the case, including negligence, and are out on bail. All of the non-Libyan defendants, however, have been imprisoned since their arrest in February 1999, and their ability to consult with their lawyers and see their families has been severely curtailed, Bulgarian officials said.

"Who charged them with this odious task?" Gaddafi asked at an AIDS conference in Nigeria in April. "Some said it was the CIA. Others said it was Mossad [the Israeli intelligence service]. They carried out an experiment on these children."

Gaddafi said the seven non-Libyan defendants would have "an international trial, like the Lockerbie trial," but Bulgarian officials said the promise proved empty because their citizens enjoyed none of the due process accorded two Libyans accused of blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 and tried under Scottish law in the Netherlands.

Two of the accused nurses told the court they were forced to confess to an international conspiracy under torture. One, Kristiyana Vulchev, said she was subjected to electric shocks and endured "every kind of torture known since the Middle Ages."

The two nurses retracted their confessions in open court, and one of their lawyers demanded an explanation for one defendant's broken ribs and the scars on the buttocks of another.

Amnesty International has expressed concern about the trial, and the Bulgarian branch of the Helsinki Committee, a human rights group, said it might bring the case before the U.N. Human Rights Committee; Libya was recently elected to a seat on the U.N. body.

Two years of intense Bulgarian diplomacy, including personal pleas to Gaddafi, have failed to end the case. The government, responding to public outrage here, has become increasingly fierce in its condemnation of the treatment of its citizens.

"Confessions made under duress show that the trial is unjust and unfair," said Deputy Foreign Minister Marin Raikov. "Bulgaria will not accept a political lynch law with the six medics."

Other officials here say the Bulgarians are being railroaded to deflect domestic criticism from the Libyan regime, particularly in Benghazi, a stronghold of dissent. "For the regime there to be accountable for its own mistakes is practically impossible, and so it is eagerly blaming foreigners," said Anton Girginov, a member of a Bulgarian government commission monitoring the trial. "They have used torture instead of expert opinion and they have done everything to avoid getting at the truth."

Bulgaria had a long-standing relationship with Libya, which continued in some fields after the fall of communism, and 6,000 Bulgarian medical workers are in the country. Libya's medical system has been failing under the weight of international sanctions, and Bulgarian officials said syringes were reused and not sterilized as a cost-saving measure.

After the discovery of the AIDS outbreak in 1998, a number of Bulgarians were questioned. None were arrested until February 1999, when 23 people were taken into custody; all but seven were quickly released. Two of the six Bulgarian defendants -- the doctor and his wife, who was one of the nurses -- didn't even work at the hospital. But they allegedly masterminded the plot with foreign intelligence services. Another defendant, a nurse, had not yet moved to Libya when the first infection was discovered in May 1998.

The Bulgarians' Libyan lawyer wondered in court why the defendants, who were allegedly paid at least $1,000 each, didn't flee Libya in the six months between the commission of the crime and their arrest. "It is only logical," said the lawyer, Othmane Bizanthi, "that when a person commits a crime he should not wait to be caught."

* * *

Al-Ahram (Egypt)
April 29, 2001

Qadhafi: The CIA and the Israeli Mossad injected AIDS to Libyan children

Our brother, the Colonel Mu'ammar Al-Qadhafi, the leader of the Libyan revolution, revealed that two years ago Libyan children in the city of Benghazi suffered from the most abominable crime in the history of mankind, when foreign nurses injected them with the AIDS virus, while pretending to immunize them.

In a speech given during the closing session of The Special African Summit for the Fight Against the AIDS Epidemic... Qadhafi said that Libya will hand over all information regarding this vile crime to the World Health Organization (WHO) and to other relevant international organizations so the world will know of the plot, which bear no mercy for children and from which the Libyan people suffer.

Qadhafi added that there are those who think that the CIA or the Israeli Mossad were behind this crime. He emphasized that these children were transported to Europe for treatment and that European health authorities are well aware of the matter. Other [infected] children are treated by Libyan clinics.

Qadhafi added that this act, which is a malicious sex crime, reveals the ugly face of those who introduced the AIDS virus to Africa in order to exhaust its strength and deplete its resources with the intention of gaining control over Africa. He remarked that Africa has turned into a market of high demand for pharmaceutical and other AIDS-treatment medical products. He claimed that international monopolies strive to continue disseminating the AIDS virus as long as possible in order to double their profits from sales of pharmaceutical products, which inhibit the effects of the disease.

Qadhafi clarified that world health authorities stated more then once that they were able to isolate the AIDS virus, meaning that they made considerable progress regarding methods to control the virus. He explained that medical laboratories can achieve a perfect treatment for this disease and even find immunization for it, but big capitalist corporations prevent this from taking place in order to maintain their large profits.

Qadhafi added that the smallpox virus, which the World Health Organization declared eradicated from the world, is still kept in CIA laboratories. He asked why the U.S. is not handing it over to the World Health Organization and explained that the reason was the U.S. intention to use it for biological warfare. Qadhafi stated that Libya will raise this humanitarian issue in international fora and [argued] that nations and governments must take a firm stand on such matters which have implications on the fate of nations.

* * *

Associated Press
February 17, 2002

Libyan Court Throws Some AIDS Charges
By Khalid Al-Deeb

TRIPOLI, Libya -- A court for national security cases ended its trial of six Bulgarian medics accused of infecting hundreds of Libyan children with AIDS, throwing out charges of sabotage and cooperation with foreign parties and sending the case back to prosecutors Sunday.

The Bulgarians, five nurses and a doctor, have been on trial for two years, accused of injecting 393 children at a Libyan hospital with HIV-contaminated blood. They pleaded innocent to the charges, which also included murder and conspiracy.

The People's Court, which hears only national security cases, had postponed its verdict twice last year and said it would be announced Sunday. But the presiding judge, Ibrahim Abu Shinaf, said the court was sending the case to the prosecutor's office without a verdict because it did not involve national security.

"After going through the evidence, the court has found that this case has nothing to do with state security or acts of sabotage and there is no tangible evidence of such crimes," Shinaf said.

Prosecutors are likely to refer the case to a criminal court. It was unclear what charges the defendants would face in a criminal trial, but they could still include murder and conspiracy, and the penalty for murder could be death.

A defense lawyer and the Bulgarian government welcomed the ruling.

"The decision is a positive step in the interest of the accused after the most important accusations, sabotage and cooperation with foreign parties, were dropped," attorney Othman el-Bezanti told The Associated Press.

The trial, which began in February 1999, has drawn international criticism, with Bulgaria calling it a political case and the rights group Amnesty International saying there were "serious irregularities" in pretrial proceedings.

In Sofia, Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov said the development was encouraging. "I believe that the new investigation will acquit the Bulgarian medics of the gravest charges brought against them," he said in a statement issued by his office Sunday.

In recent months, Bulgaria stepped up its diplomatic campaign for greater transparency in the trial, and Libya appeared to respond. Early this month, Bulgaria said the defendants had been transferred from a Tripoli prison to a guarded house.

Parvanov thanked Seif el-Islam, the son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, for "his role of an impartial monitor of the trial." Seif recently promised to keep a close eye on the case.

During the trial, defense lawyers accused Libya of trying to divert attention from poor conditions at state-run hospitals, saying the infections at the Al-Fateh hospital in Benghazi stemmed from poor hygiene and the reuse of syringes. Twenty-three of the children infected at the hospital reportedly developed AIDS and died. Many Bulgarian doctors and engineers work in Libya, where salaries are higher than at home. Nine Libyans are being tried on negligence charges in the case. (c) 2002 The Associated Press

* * *

End in sight for Libya Aids trial
January 26, 2004

By Paul Wood BBC correspondent in Benghazi, Libya

The trial in Libya of five nurses and a doctor from Bulgaria charged with deliberately giving the Aids virus to 400 children may soon be over. The medics are accused by the Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi, of taking orders from the CIA and the Israeli secret service, Mossad.

The trial has been going on in the city of Benghazi for almost five years.

Hopes are high that the medics may be released as early as next month, after Libya's attempts to end its isolation.

The idea that the CIA and Mossad paid Bulgarian nurses to murder Libyan children in order to destabilise the country may seem too fantastic for any spy novel.

But for the past five years, it has been an accepted fact in Libya - a theory put forward by Colonel Gaddafi himself, and used as the basis for the trial of the six Bulgarians.

Torture

The nurses have called expert witnesses, including one of the team which discovered the Aids virus, who said this was an epidemic caused by poor hygiene at the hospital, not by any international conspiracy.

The Bulgarians did sign confessions, but they told me they were tortured by the police, with daily beatings, sexual assault and electric shocks. The police officers accused of doing this have now been charged themselves - their defence: that they were tortured before signing their confessions too.

They now sit at the back of the same courtroom as the Bulgarians.

This trial is a sometimes-bizarre affair.

Western diplomats say the prosecutions arose because the authorities simply needed someone to blame for a tragedy which has caused outrage in Libya - more than 400 children infected in Benghazi.

Now though, with Libya trying to rejoin the international community, there have been hints that the Bulgarians' long nightmare may be about to end.

In fact, what happens to them now is being seen by many as a test of just how serious Libya is about ended its long, and sometimes rather paranoid, isolation.

Reuters
February 6, 2004

Bulgaria hopes Libya will acquit medics
By Anna Mudeva

SOFIA - Libya's drive to mend ties with the West have spurred hopes in Bulgaria that it will set free six Bulgarians standing trial over charges they intentionally infected hundreds of Libyan children with AIDS.

The five nurses and a doctor, who Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi once accused of being part of a U.S.-Israeli plot to topple his regime, could face the death penalty.

Officials in Sofia say the six and a Palestinian doctor, detained in Libya five years ago, are innocent and they should either be acquitted or the charges dropped. The Benghazi criminal court, which is trying the medics, meets again on Monday for what is expected to be the last session before a verdict is issued. "We sincerely hope that as Gaddafi is now melting the ice with the West, our compatriots would be acquitted," a government official said.

Prosecutors have asked for the death penalty for the medics, saying they deliberately infected 426 children at a Benghazi hospital with blood products contaminated with the HIV virus that causes AIDS. Libya says 43 of the children have died since 1999.

Bulgarian Justice Minister Anton Stankov told Reuters there was no evidence to suggest the medics were guilty.

"We will not accept their conviction because all the evidence so far shows that our compatriots are innocent," he said. "The case is definitely not about a criminal act...and that's why the Bulgarian state is so strongly involved."

Last September, Luc Montagnier, a French doctor who first detected the HIV virus in the hospital where the six had worked, testified that the epidemic broke out in 1997, about a year before the arrival of the Bulgarians.

ANOTHER TEST FOR LIBYA

Libya is also seeking some $10 million in compensation for each infected child, comparing the amounts to those it agreed to pay to the families of 270 victims killed in the 1988 airliner bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland.

The landmark Lockerbie case agreement and Libya's decision later to abandon its nuclear arms programme have led to a thaw in relations with former arch-foe the United States, Britain and other European nations.

Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passy, who met Gaddafi three times to plea for a fair ruling, said the medics HIV trial was an important test for Libya's efforts to reintegrate with the international community.

The case has triggered deep passions in both countries and attracted the attention of foreign observers and the European Union, which Bulgaria hopes to join in 2007.

The Independent
February 10, 2004

Libya 'tortured doctors' into Aids confessions
By Peter Popham in Rome

A trial in Libya of seven expatriate health workers accused of deliberately infecting 400 children with HIV enters its final phase this week, as the former pariah nation steps up efforts to improve its relations with the West.

Mohammad Abdulrahman Shalgam, Libya's Foreign Minister, arrived in London yesterday for talks with Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, and Tony Blair, the first such visit by a Libyan minister in more than 20 years. The Foreign Office has called the visit a "milestone in what have been steadily improving relations" and part of a wider plan to bring Libya into the "international mainstream".

A wave of infections among children in the public hospital in Benghazi came to light in 1998. The notion that foreign staff had deliberately infected the children, at least 43 of whom have since died, was apparently Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's idea.

At a conference on Aids in Nigeria in April 2001, the Libyan leader said of the epidemic: "It is an odious crime. We have found a doctor and a group of nurses in possession of HIV, who had been requested to do experiments on the effects of the virus on children. And who charged them with this odious conspiracy? Some say it was the CIA, others say it was Mossad."

The foreign health workers were first charged with "premeditated murder with the intention of undermining the Libyan state", an offence that carries the death penalty. The case was dismissed, but a new one was filed, charging the five Bulgarian nurses and two doctors, one Bulgarian and one Palestinian, with "provoking an Aids epidemic through the use of contaminated products", another capital crime.

A daughter of Zdravko Georgiev, the Bulgarian doctor, said: "My father was kept in total isolation for one year, in a cell one metre square without light. He was beaten and subjected to heavy psychological pressure.

Then he was transferred to a prison where 100 inmates were held in a single cell, without even space to sit. For one year he was not allowed a change of clothes." Two nurses who had confessed and then recanted said the confessions had been extracted from them through torture, which included electric shocks and beatings.

An eminent French Aids expert, Professor Luc Montagnier, told the court that the infection was caused by poor hygiene in the hospital. He pointed out that the epidemic had begun before the accused people started working there, and continued after their arrests. A western diplomat in Tripoli said that much importance was attached to how Libya resolved the case, as human rights was an area where it still needed to demonstrate real progress.

London and Washington have been moving rapidly to bring Tripoli back in from the cold since the Libyan leader offered to dismantle the country's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programmes and open the country to international inspections.

* * *

Associated Press:
May 06, 2004

Libyan court condemns five Bulgarian nurses, Palestinian doctor to death for infecting children with HIV
By KHALED AL-DEEB
Associated Press Writer

BENGHAZI, Libya- A Libyan court on Thursday condemned five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death by firing squad for infecting patients with the AIDS virus.

A sixth Bulgarian accused, a doctor, received four years in prison for changing foreign currency on the black market. He stood trial for infecting patients with AIDS, but his verdict did not mention that charge. No explanation was given for the change.

Nine Libyan hospital officials were aquitted of negligence.

The head of the five-judge panel that heard the case, Fadallah el-Sherif, said: "The court is sentencing defendants numbers one to six to death by firing squad."

Under Libyan law, death sentences generate an automatic appeal.

As soon as the sentence was announced, five relatives of the infected children shouted: "Allahu Akbar!" or "God is great!" The accused, wearing civilian clothes in the dock, did not react.

"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.

In Sofia, the Bulgarian government's spokesman, Dimitar Tsonev, criticised the verdict.

"This trial cannot be called just, as not a single proof provided by the defence has been taken into account," Tsonev said. "The verdict is based solely on confessions made by some of the defendants under duress."

Bulgarian Justice Minister Anton Stankov said: "This verdict is absurd, it lacks evidence and justice." He pledged Bulgaria would continue to support its convicted citizens.

The Bulgarian Ambassador to Libya, Zdravko Velev, said the Libyans would shortly free the doctor convicted of illegal currency trading, Zdravko Georgiev, as he has already spent more than four years in prison.

Irish Foreign Minister Brian Cowen told his Libyan counterpart, Abdul Rahman Shalghan, that the EU has "serious concerns" about the fairness of the trial, EU spokesman Diego de Ojeda told reporters Thursday.

"This is a very negative surprise for us," said Ojeda. "The European Union has assessed severe irregularities during the trial in terms of the rights of defense."

Cowen, whose county holds the EU presidency, met Shalghan on the margin of an EU-Mediterranean meeting.

Many relatives stood outside the packed court, holding pictures of Gadhafi and placards that read: "God is great," "Long live justice" in Arabic.

Prosecutors had demanded death sentences, accusing the Bulgarians of intentionally infecting more than 400 children with HIV-contaminated blood as part of an experiment to find a cure for AIDS. Twenty-three of the children have reportedly died of AIDS.

Human rights groups have charged Libya concocted the experiment story to cover up for unsafe practices in its hospitals and clinics.

Dr. Luc Montagnier, the French co-discoverer of the AIDS virus, said poor hygiene at the Benghazi hospital is likely to have led to the contamination. He estimated it 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 and said the Bulgarians willfully infected the children with the virus through blood transfusions.

Initially, Libya claimed the infections were part of a conspiracy by the CIA and Israeli intelligence, but it later backed away from those allegations.

All six Bulgarians had pleaded innocent.

Libyan police arrested them in February 1999. They were in prison until September 2002, when a high tribunal in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, acquitted them of conspiracy charges and handed the case over to an ordinary criminal court.

They were then placed under house arrest in Tripoli. They were detained again when their trial recommenced in the eastern city of Benghazi in September, according to Bulgarian media reports.

The convicted Palestinian doctor was identified as Ashraf Gomaa. The Bulgarian nurses, all women, were: Kristiyana Valcheva, Nassya Nenova, Valentina Siropulo, Valya Chervenyashka and Snezhana Dimitrova.

Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Pasi said the medics were severely tortured.

The suspects 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.

The trial before the criminal court in Benghazi was nearing its end when Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi sought to end decades as an international pariah. He has recently renounced weapons of mass destruction and opened his nuclear programs to international inspection.

Libya has also agreed to pay damages to relatives of passengers killed in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and the 1989 bombing of a French jetliner.

The shifts have won Gadhafi suspension of many of the international sanctions imposed on his country for sponsoring terrorism.

EU tells Libya to reverse death sentence for Bulgarian medics
By ROBERT WIELAARD
Associated Press Writer

DUBLIN, Ireland, May 6 (AP) - The European Union expressed shock Thursday at the Libyan death sentences for six Bulgarian medics convicted of infecting patients with the AIDS virus, and called for the verdict to be reversed.

Irish Foreign Minister Brian Cowen said he conveyed the EU's "profound concern" at a meeting in Dublin with Mohammed Abdul Rahman Shalghan, the Libyan foreign minister.

In Brussels, Belgium, European Commission President Romano Prodi reiterated the EU's concerns about "the conduct of the investigations, the treatment of the defendants and the delays in bringing the case" to a verdict.

He spoke of a "lack of compelling evidence of the guilt of the defendants."

EU officials said if left in place, the verdict and sentence will complicate efforts to improve Libya's chilly relations with the EU.

"It does cast a shadow over a relationship that we hoped was getting better," said EU External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten. "I very much hope that the Libyan authorities will move rapidly to meet our concerns."

Patten attended Cowen's meeting with the Libyan foreign minister in the margin of an EU-Mediterranean foreign ministers meeting.

EU concerns about the trial of the Bulgarians were raised when Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi visited the EU head office in Brussels last week.

News that a court in Benghazi condemned the six Bulgarians to death by firing squad broke as Cowen was about to meet Galghan in Dublin.

EU officials said the Libyan foreign minister insisted his government cannot undo the verdict because the judiciary is independent, but said Libyan law provided for an automatic appeal.

"Cowen then told the Libyan minister that the appeal procedure must be accelerated," said EU spokesman Diego de Ojeda said.

Prosecutors had demanded death sentences, accusing the Bulgarians of intentionally infecting more than 400 children with HIV-contaminated blood as part of an experiment to find a cure for AIDS. Twenty-three of the children have reportedly died of AIDS.

Human rights groups have alleged that Libya concocted the experiment story to cover up for unsafe practices in its hospitals and clinics.

* * *

Reuters
May 6, 2004

Libya condemns foreign "AIDS plot" medics to death
By Salah Sarrar

BENGHAZI, Libya- A Libyan court sentenced five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor on Thursday to death by firing squad after convicting them of deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with the deadly HIV virus.

Bulgaria condemned the verdicts announced by court officials as "unfair and absurd" and was joined in outrage by its Western partners -- the European Union and the United States.

The issue is a major hurdle to Libya joining an EU economic partnership with Mediterranean region countries.

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who is seeking closer ties with the West after more than a decade of international isolation, had promised to swiftly resolve the dispute during a ground-breaking visit to EU headquarters in Brussels last week.

The condemned, detained in February 1999, were convicted of infecting 426 Libyan children at a Benghazi hospital with blood products contaminated with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

They had pleaded not guilty, insisting the epidemic Tripoli says has killed more than 40 children since 1999 started before they began work at the hospital.

Prosecutors charged them with "uncontrollable murder aimed at destabilising the country, deliberately starting an epidemic...and conspiring to intentionally infect children with the AIDS virus".

In 2001 Gaddafi said the children were infected as part of an experiment ordered by the U.S. or Israeli secret services.

EU aspirant Bulgaria has slammed the trial as unfair, saying there is no hard evidence except for confessions from two nurses who were held without council for a year before being indicted.

Nine Libyans have been on trial for torturing the confessions out of them.

Defence lawyers said they would appeal the sentences.

Zdravko Georgiev, a Bulgarian doctor and the husband of one of the nurses, was sentenced to four years in jail but was released on Thursday on time served.

"I'm not happy at the moment. I cannot feel free because I left behind six innocent people," Georgiev told Bulgarian TV after his release.

JUBILATION, GRIEF

Scores of dancing and chanting relatives of the HIV-infected children took to the streets near the court in the Mediterranean port city after the verdicts were announced.

"The verdict is fair. What they did is a crime against humanity. They planted a bomb inside our children," said Ramdane Ali Mohamed, whose younger sister Hiba died of AIDS.

In Sofia, several hundred somber demonstrators staged a candle-light vigil for the condemned, aghast at the ruling.

"We are totally convinced they did not conspire to cause the epidemic. It's not possible for a normal person, let alone a nurse, to do such a thing," said pensioner Nina Taneva, 57.

The European Commission said it was "deeply disappointed" at the ruling. The U.S. State Department called it "unacceptable".

"We cannot accept these verdicts... We are not satisfied by the court's decision because it doesn't take into account the proof given by AIDS experts," Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passy, on a visit in Washington, said in a statement.

The Balkan state's parliament speaker, Ognyan Gerdzhikov, said he was confident the sentences would not be carried out.

"First, they can be appealed. Secondly, Libya has not executed death sentences in nine years, and I'd be very surprised if they start now. Thirdly, I expect Gaddafi to act like a humanist to win certain political credit which he needs from world public opinion," he told national radio. Last year Luc Montagnier, the French doctor credited with first discovering the HIV virus, said the epidemic emerged in the Libyan hospital in 1997, a year before the medics arrived.

He testified that the children were most probably infected through negligence and poor hygiene.

Libyan Foreign Minister Mohammed Abdel-Rahman Shalgam, during a visit in Dublin, said he opposed the death penalty but could not interfere, an EU spokesman said.

Human rights watchdog agency Amnesty International denounced the verdicts in a statement: "We are shocked by the imposition of these death sentences and call for the Libyan authorities to immediately quash them".

* * *

One Bulgarian doctor jailed for 4 years in Libya

BENGHAZI, Libya, May 6 (Reuters) - One of the six Bulgarian medics sentenced in Libya on Thursday for deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with the deadly HIV virus received a four-year jail sentence and not the death penalty, lawyers said.

Court officials had earlier said that all six - five female nurses and Dr Zdravko Georgiev - and a Palestinian had been sentenced to death.

But defence lawyer Plamen Yalnazov told Bulgarian radio after checking with the court administration that Georgiev was sentenced to four years in prison.

In Benghazi, another defence lawyer said: "The confusion about the sentences came from the way the judge announced the verdicts."

* * *

Reuters
May 6, 2004

U.S. calls Libyan verdict in AIDS case unacceptable
WASHINGTON

The United States on Thursday called "unacceptable" a Libyan court's decision to sentence to death five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who were convicted of infecting Libyan children with the HIV virus.

"We find the verdict (that was) pronounced in the court to be unacceptable," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters. "We urge the government of Libya to take steps to resolve this case quickly."

The court condemned the five, detained in February 1999, to be executed by firing squad after convicting them of deliberately infecting 426 Libyan children at a Benghazi hospital with blood products contaminated with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

They had pleaded not guilty, insisting they were not to blame for the epidemic which Libya says has killed more than 40 children since 1999.

After years of treating Tripoli as a pariah, Washington has begun a dramatic rapprochement since Libya's Dec. 19 decision to give up weapons of mass destruction. On April 23, Washington said it would ease the U.S. trade embargo on Libya, allowing U.S. firms to sell Libyan oil for the first time since 1986.

Boucher said he did not know if the case would affect the process of easing U.S. sanctions but said: "It is certainly a matter of importance to us that we have raised ... with the Libyan government and will continue to follow very closely."

He said he did not know whether the U.S. government had raised the matter with Libya since the verdict was announced.

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, seeking closer ties with the West after more than a decade of international isolation, vowed to swiftly resolve the dispute during a ground-breaking visit to the European Union headquarters in Brussels last week.

"We have been very critical of Libyan violations of the legal and human rights of the Bulgarian medics," Boucher said, noting the defendants had the right to appeal the verdict.

"As (U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell) said yesterday on this, the United States will continue to follow this matter closely and do everything we can to bring pressure on the Libyan government to resolve this matter so these people are released (and) return home," Boucher said.

* * *

BBC
May 6, 2004

Libya death sentence for medics Libya has sentenced five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death by firing squad for deliberately infecting some 400 children with HIV. Prosecutors demanded the death penalty, claiming the accused gave patients HIV in a bid to find an Aids cure.

The medics, who worked at a children's hospital in the city of Benghazi, were arrested five years ago.

Bulgaria's government, which had been lobbying for their release, condemned the "unfair and absurd" verdicts.

Packed court

The Libyan court found the six health workers guilty of having caused the death of 40 children and of infecting almost 400 others with HIV.

Another Bulgarian, Dr Zdravko Georgiev, was initially reported to have received the death penalty but has in fact been given a four-year sentence and may be released soon, Bulgaria's ambassador to Libya said.

Nine Libyans who worked at the same hospital were acquitted.

The courtroom in Benghazi was surrounded by 100 armed police, Bulgaria's BTA news agency reported. Inside it was packed to capacity, with 15 foreign diplomats among those attending the session which was the culmination of a trial stopped and started several times over the years.

At one point, the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, had accused the health workers of acting on orders from the CIA and the Israeli secret service, Mossad.

Libya later rowed back on this allegation.

The medics had always protested their innocence and said they had been tortured by the police, with daily beatings, sexual assault and electric shocks.

They called expert witnesses, including one of the team which discovered the Aids virus, who said this was an epidemic caused by poor hygiene at the hospital, not by any international conspiracy.

Relatives celebrate

Western diplomats say the prosecutions arose because the authorities simply needed someone to blame for a tragedy which caused outrage in Libya.

With Col Gaddafi recently moving to improve Libya's international standing, Bulgaria had hoped the court would be lenient.

"I'm shocked by the verdicts...We're not going to accept them," said Bulgarian Justice Minister Anton Stankov.

The government in Sofia is calling for a strong reaction from the international community.

The European Union has already voiced its extreme concern.

Bulgaria's parliamentary speaker, Ognyan Gerdzhikov, said he was confident the death sentences would not be carried out.

"I expect Gaddafi to act like a humanist to win certain political credit, which he needs from public opinion," he told Bulgarian radio.

But relatives of the infected children were celebrating.

"The verdict is fair. What they did is a crime against humanity. They planted a bomb inside our children," Ramdane Ali Mohamed, whose sister died of Aids, told Reuters.

* * *

Arab News
10 May, 2004

Libya Rejects US Criticism of Death Sentences

Libya hit back at US condemnation of death sentences pronounced by a Libyan court on five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor for the spread of AIDS in a childrens hospital.

The United States has no right to speak of human rights, government spokesman Hassuna Shaush told a press conference here late Friday.

Referring to the abuse of prisoners in a US-run jail in Iraq, Shaush said, Before voicing an opinion on the Benghazi verdict, the United States would have done better to apologize for Abu Ghraib.

The United States means that the death of more than 400 Libyan children is acceptable but the punishment of the guilty is unacceptable, he added.

We did not want to politicize this matter, but the American reactions oblige us to reply.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Thursday, hours after the sentences were passed: We find the verdict that was pronounced in the court to be unacceptable.

He said the legal and human rights of the accused had been violated numerous times since the allegations were first made five years ago and vowed to continue to raise the matter with Libyan officials.

We recognize the great human tragedy that occurred in Benghazi and our deepest sympathy is extended to the families of the four hundred children who were infected with the HIV/AIDS virus, he told reporters.

But he added that the accused, who have a right to appeal the verdicts, should be released and allowed to return home.

A Bulgarian doctor was also jailed for four years by the same court in a separate case.

Boucher said the US diplomats attached to the newly opened US interests section in Tripoli had attended the trial and would be following up on the matter with Libyan officials.

We urge the government of Libya to take steps to resolve this case quickly, he said.

The lawyers for the defendants have said their clients are being used as scapegoats for inadequate sterilization of instruments at the pediatric hospital in Benghazi before the Bulgarians and the Palestinian arrived in 1998.

All pleaded innocent to the charges when the trial opened four years ago and the verdicts were postponed several times.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Wednesday after meeting with visiting Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passy that Washington had been pressing and would continue to call on Libya to release the seven health workers.

Neither Boucher nor Powell could say whether the court verdict would affect the dramatic rapprochement between the United States and Libya which has come about since Tripoli renounced weapons of mass destruction in December. The verdicts were also condemned by Bulgaria and the European Union.

* * *

The Independent, London
9 May, 2004

'Gaddafi's police savaged my son to force a confession'
Libya's barbaric 10-month abuse of Palestinian doctor sentenced with five nurses to be shot for 'causing Aids epidemic'

By Peter Popham in Rome

A Palestinian doctor in Libya who was sentenced this week to die by firing squad for deliberately infecting hundreds of babies with Aids was so badly tortured by Libyan police that his father could no longer recognise him, The Independent on Sunday has learnt.

Dr Ashraf Hasan, 34, and five Bulgarian nurses working at the hospital in Benghazi, Libya, where the epidemic occurred, were arrested by Libyan police in 1999. Colonel Gaddafi, Libya's dictator for the past 35 years, claimed later that they had infected the children on orders from the CIA or Mossad.

Libyan public opinion has been so whipped up against the foreign health workers that Dr Hasan's parents do not dare to visit him in prison in Benghazi for fear of being lynched. When the sentences were announced in court on Thursday, relatives of some of the infected children danced and whooped in the street.

But yesterday, speaking to the press for the first time, Dr Hasan's father, Ahmad Hasan, told the IoS that the accused were innocent victims of a clumsy plot by the Libyan authorities to cover up squalid conditions of hygiene at the state-run hospital.

And to force Dr Hasan to make a confession, he said, police subjected him to unspeakable torture over a period of 10 months.

"Ashraf was arrested on 29 January 1999," said Mr Hasan, a Palestinian who moved to Libya with his family in 1967 and who with his wife taught in Libyan schools for more than 30 years. "Until 30 November of that year we had no information about what had happened to him. I went from one police station to the next trying to find out. Then in November I learnt that he was being held with the Bulgarian nurses at a police station in Tripoli, the capital.

"I was allowed to meet him there for 10 minutes. But he had been so badly tortured that I didn't recognise him. I thought they had brought in the wrong person."

Later Ashraf was able to tell his father what had been done to him - details confirmed by a hospital report prepared after Dr Ashraf collapsed in court in April 2001 and was sent to a prison hospital.

To try and force Dr Hasan to admit to being a Mossad agent, he was strapped to a metal bed frame with electric wires attached to his fingers, toes, nipples and genitals, and given electric shocks for hours. He was beaten on the head and groin with electric batons, sodomised with a broom handle until he bled, and repeatedly knocked unconscious with drugs. He was taken outside and dragged around a field by wire attached to his genitals. He was hung upside down until he blacked out, and suspended by his hands for long periods until his shoulder was dislocated. Cigarettes were repeatedly stubbed out on his skin, and he still bears the burn marks. He was punched in the face with such violence that he lost three front teeth.

Several of the nurses who were given the same sentence as Dr Ashraf on Thursday have revealed details of how they, too, were tortured and, in the case of two of them, raped during their incarceration.

No evidence was offered by the prosecution to support the case against the medical workers. The defence called eminent Aids experts, including Dr Luc Montagnier, the man who first identified the HIV virus, who told the court that the epidemic was probably caused by poor hygiene in the hospital: needles, for example, were not sterilised but merely washed under a tap. He also pointed out that the epidemic started before the foreigners arrived, and continued after they were arrested.

The defendants will appeal the court's decision, which, coming so soon after Tony Blair's visit to Libya and Colonel Gaddafi's rehabilitation in Brussels, was greeted with consternation in Europe. The European Commission said it was "deeply disappointed". In London, a Foreign Office spokesman said yesterday: "We are appalled by the harshness of these sentences and are raising urgently our concerns with the Libyans at a senior level."

But Colonel Gaddafi has frequently demonstrated a disregard bordering on contempt for foreign opinion - an attitude repeatedly rewarded by international organisations.

Until now Ahmed Hasan has said nothing about his son's case, fearing to prejudice the result. But now he feels he has nothing to lose. "This is how Libya pays me and my wife for teaching in their schools for 33 years," he said yesterday. "My son and my family have been completely destroyed by this case. Who is responsible? The Libyan people, or Colonel Gaddafi himself? Who is the criminal?"

* * *

The Independent, London
7 May 2004

Libyan court orders medics to be executed by firing squad
By Peter Popham in Rome

Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were sentenced to death by firing squad by a Libyan court yesterday, prompting the European Union to call for the verdict to be reversed.

At the end of the trial, which was seen by western diplomats in Tripoli as a litmus test for Libya's progress on human rights, the foreign health workers were convicted of deliberately infecting 400 children with the Aids virus in a hospital in Benghazi. At least 43 of the children have died.

The verdict was deeply embarrassing for the European Union, which had welcomed the Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to Brussels last week and expressed concern about the case. The decision also raises questions about Tony Blair's rush to rehabilitate the Libyan leader, one which culminated in a visit by the British premier to Tripoli in March.

In court, relatives of the children greeted the sentences with joy. Some shouted "Allahu akbar" meaning "God is great". Abdel Razek al-Odaibi, father of one of the infected children, said: "I thank God for this sentence. If there were a greater sentence than death, I would have wished it for them."

But in Sofia, the government condemned the verdicts as "unfair and absurd". Bulgaria's Minister of Justice, Anton Stankov, said: "I'm shocked by the verdicts. We're not going to accept them."

Ireland's Foreign Minister, Brian Cowen, representing the EU under the rotating presidency, told his Libyan counterpart, Abdul Rahman Shalgham, that the EU had "serious concerns" about the trial.

"It does cast a shadow over a relationship that we hoped was getting better," said the EU External Relations Commissioner, Chris Patten.

During his visit to the EU headquarters, Col Gaddafi had promised a speedy resolution to the case. At that meeting the issue was identified as an obstacle to Libya's ambitions to deepen its economic and political ties with Europe.

The European Commission president, Romano Prodi, has long favoured developing a relationship with the Libyan leaders and received support when Mr Blair visited Tripoli, a trip that was intended as a symbolic reward for Col Gaddafi for cooperation with the US and the UK over weapons of mass destruction.

The nurses, all women, said that while in custody they were beaten, tortured with electric shocks and jumped on to make them confess. Two of them claimed to have been raped. A Bulgarian doctor, who was also standing trial, received four years in prison for changing foreign currency on the black market. He was also accused of infecting patients with Aids, but his verdict did not mention that charge and no explanation was given for the change. Nine Libyan hospital officials were acquitted of negligence.

The case originated in 1998, when children in the hospital began falling mysteriously ill. Col Gaddafi told an Aids conference in Nigeria in April 2001 that foreigners in the hospital had deliberately started the epidemic. "It is an odious crime," he said. "We have found a doctor and a group of nurses in possession of HIV, who had been requested to do experiments on the effects of the virus on children. And who charged them with this odious conspiracy? Some say it was the CIA, others say it was Mossad." Later he denied that the CIA or Mossad was implicated.

The foreign health workers were first charged with "premeditated murder with the intention of undermining the Libyan state", an offence which carries the death penalty. The case was dismissed but a new one was filed, charging the five Bulgarian nurses and two doctors, one Bulgarian and one Palestinian, with "provoking an Aids epidemic through the use of contaminated products", another capital crime.

A French Aids expert, Professor Luc Montagnier, told the court that the infection was caused by poor hygiene. He claimed that the epidemic had probably begun in 1997, one year before the accused began working there, and that it continued after their arrests.

Last night there was an immediate flurry of diplomatic and legal activity at the meeting between Mr Cowen and Mr Shalgham.

Diego Ojeda, a spokesman for the European Commission, said the Libyan Foreign Minister insisted his government cannot change the verdict because the judiciary is independent, but said "Libyan law provided for an automatic appeal. Mr Cowen then told the Libyan minister that the appeal procedure must be accelerated," Mr Ojeda said.

Defence lawyers have already said that they would appeal the sentences.

* * *

Agence France-Presse
10 May, 2004

Bulgaria to appeal death sentences in Libyan AIDS case

Bulgaria said it will appeal death sentences handed down by a Libyan court on five Bulgarian nurses found guilty of infecting hundreds of children with AIDS, a verdict which could undermine Libya's improving ties with the West.

"We've advised the defense to immediately take action to file an appeal against the verdict," Justice Minister Anton Stankov said after an interministerial meeting in Sofia dealing with the aftermath of the lengthy trial.

"We agree with neither the death sentences handed down nor the so-called guilt" of the nurses, Stankov told reporters.

A court in the northern Libyan city of Benghazi on Thursday sentenced the five nurses as well as a Palestinian doctor to death by firing squad for spreading AIDS in a children's hospital, in a saga that has been going on since 1998.

They were also ordered to pay a total of one million dollars (827,000 euros) in compensation to the families of the victims.

The accused were convicted of having deliberately infected more than 400 children with the HIV virus that can lead to AIDS by injecting them with tainted blood products. Forty-three of the children have since died.

All defendants pleaded not guilty to the charges when the trial opened four years ago and the verdicts were postponed several times.

Two of the Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor said during the trial that they were tortured into making the confessions.

Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi had said in 2001 that the case might be one of a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or Israeli Mossad plot to experiment with the AIDS virus.

The lawyers for the defendants have said their clients are being used as scapegoats for inadequate sterilisation of instruments at the pediatric hospital in Benghazi before the medical workers arrived in 1998.

This claim was backed up in court by the French doctor who first isolated the HIV virus.

Luc Montagnier last September told the court that the AIDS epidemic had begun before the arrival of the accused at the hospital and was probably caused by poor hygiene.

But the state prosecutor called on the jury to disregard Montagnier's testimony. He asked for the death penalty based on evidence by a Libyan doctor and on statements to the police.

The European Union and the United States both condemned the verdicts, Washington calling it "unacceptable."

US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the legal and human rights of the accused had been violated numerous times since the allegations were first made five years ago and vowed to continue to raise the matter with Libyan officials.

Libya hit back at the US condemnation, government spokesman Hassuna Shaush saying: "The United States has no right to speak of human rights."

Referring to the abuse of prisoners in a US-run jail in Iraq , Shaush said: "Before voicing an opinion on the Benghazi verdict, the United States would have done better to apologise for Abu Ghraib.

"The United States means that the death of more than 400 Libyan children is acceptable but the punishment of the guilty is unacceptable," he added.

"We did not want to politicise this matter, but the American reactions oblige us to reply."

The verdicts were seen as crucial for the international standing of Libya, which has been moving to rejoin the world community since it agreed in December to disarm its weapons of mass destruction programmes.

It also agreed to pay compensation to the families of those killed in two bombings, of a PanAm jumbo jet over Scotland in 1988 and a French airliner over the Niger desert in 1989, in attacks which were carried out by Libyan agents.

* * *

Financial Times
6 May 2004

Libya sentences medics to firing squad
Author: Salah Sarrar

A Libyan court has sentenced six Bulgarian medics and a Palestinian doctor to death by firing squad for deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with the deadly HIV virus, court officials say.

Bulgaria condemned the "unfair and absurd" verdicts and called for a strong reaction from its Western partners -- the European Union, NATO and the United States.

Defence lawyers said they would appeal the sentences. The medics had pleaded not guilty, insisting they were not to blame for the epidemic.

Scores of relatives of the HIV-infected children took to the streets near the court building in a joyful display.

The health workers, detained in early 1999, were convicted of infecting 426 Libyan children at a Benghazi hospital with blood products contaminated with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Bulgarians had expected some leniency after Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's recent efforts to renew ties with the West.

"I'm shocked by the verdicts. The government's official position is that we're not going to accept them. Such verdicts are unfair and without grounds," Bulgarian Justice Minister Anton Stankov said in Sofia.

In contrast, relatives of the infected children were happy.

"The verdict is fair. What they did is a crime against humanity. They planted a bomb inside our children," said Ramdane Ali Mohamed, whose little sister Hiba died of AIDS.

More than 40 of the children have died since 1999, adding to already heated emotions in both countries over the case.

The issue gained greater attention in recent weeks as Libya emerged from international isolation after scrapping its nuclear and chemical arms programme in December.

"We expect a strong reaction from all our partners, especially the European Union, the United States and NATO, who have all put forth efforts to ensure a fair trial," Stankov said.

Families of the medics were stunned and were not willing to talk to the media. But Parliament Speaker Ognyan Gerdzhikov said he was confident the death sentences would not be carried out.

"First, they can be appealed. Secondly, Libya has not executed death sentences in nine years, and I'd be very surprised if they start now. Thirdly, I expect Gaddafi to act like a humanist to win certain political credit, which he needs from world public opinion," he told national radio.

"ABSURD" VERDICT

The dispute with EU candidate Bulgaria was raised during Gaddafi's ground-breaking visit to the EU last week. European Commission President Romano Prodi said then he hoped a "quick and fair settlement" could be found.

Bulgarian media had speculated that if the Bulgarians were sentenced to death, Gaddafi might pardon them as part of his efforts to improve relations with Europe.

"It a shocking verdict. My clients expected to be convicted for dereliction of duty and sentenced to prison terms not death," defence lawyer Othmane Bizanti told Reuters, adding that the defendants had 60 days to lodge an appeal.

Last year Luc Montagnier, the French doctor credited with first discovering the HIV virus, said the epidemic emerged in the hospital in 1997, a year before the medics arrived, probably due to unsanitary conditions.

"Libyan authorities did not want to reach the truth about the epidemic, and I continue to stress that the Bulgarians are not to blame," Stankov said.

* * *

CNN
Thursday, May 6, 2004 Posted: 9:20 AM EDT (1320 GMT)

Libya to execute HIV- jab medics

BENGHAZI, Libya- A Libyan court has sentenced five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death for infecting hundreds of children with the AIDS virus in an attempt to find a cure for the disease.

Bulgaria condemned the "unfair and absurd" verdicts delivered on Thursday and called for a strong reaction from its Western partners- the European Union, NATO and the United States. The verdicts will be appealed, defense lawyers said.

The issue is a hurdle to Libya joining the economic Euro-Mediterranean partnership. Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi promised action in the dispute during his ground-breaking visit to the EU headquarters last week, Reuters said.

The health workers, detained in early 1999, were convicted of infecting 426 Libyan children at a Benghazi hospital with blood products contaminated with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

The court in the town of Benghazi sentenced the five female nurses and a male Palestinian doctor to death by firing squad.

Another Bulgarian doctor, Zdravko Georgiev, was jailed for four years for changing foreign currency on the black market, lawyers said. Court officials had originally said all six Bulgarians received death sentences.

Dr. Georgiev had also stood trial for infecting patients with AIDS, but the verdict did not mention that charge, and no explanation was given for the change.

One defence lawyer told Reuters: "The confusion about the sentences came from the way the judge announced the verdicts."

All six had pleaded innocent, with experts for the defense arguing that poor medical hygiene probably led to the contamination.

The European Union, Amnesty International and other organizations had criticized the case.

Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Pasi claimed the medics were tortured while they were in the custody, according to The Associated Press.

Gadhafi last week promised to resolve the dispute. Bulgarians had expected some leniency after Gadhafi's recent efforts to renew ties with the West.

"I'm shocked by the verdicts. The government's official position is that we're not going to accept them. Such verdicts are unfair and without grounds," Bulgarian Justice Minister Anton Stankov told Reuters in Sofia.

"We expect a strong reaction from all our partners, especially the European Union, the United States and NATO, who have all put forth efforts to ensure a fair trial," Stankov said.

In contrast, relatives of the infected children were happy.

"The verdict is fair. What they did is a crime against humanity. They planted a bomb inside our children," Ramdane Ali Mohamed, whose little sister Hiba died of AIDS, told the news agency.

Families of the medics were stunned and unwilling to talk to the media. But Bulgarian Parliament Speaker Ognyan Gerdzhikov said he believed the death sentences would not be carried out.

"First, they can be appealed. Secondly, Libya has not executed death sentences in nine years, and I'd be very surprised if they start now. Thirdly, I expect Gaddafi to act like a humanist to win certain political credit, which he needs from world public opinion," he told national radio.

Libya has recently emerged from international isolation after scrapping its nuclear arms program in December.

It also agreed to pay damages to relatives of passengers killed in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish village of Lockerbie and the 1989 bombing of a French airliner.

* * *

The Times, London
7 May 2004

Libya to execute medical workers over HIV
By David Sharrock

A LIBYAN court sentenced five Bulgarian female nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death by firing squad yesterday for deliberately infecting hundreds of children with HIV.

Bulgaria condemned the verdicts as Ounfair and absurdO and called for action by the European Union, Nato and the United States.

Lawyers for the condemned, who had all pleaded not guilty, said that they would appeal. But relatives of the HIV-infected children took to the streets outside the court in Benghazi to celebrate.

The nurses and doctor, detained in early 1999, were convicted of infecting 426 Libyan children at a hospital in the eastern port with blood products contaminated with HIV. More than 40 of the children have since died.

When the sentences were announced, five relatives of infected children shouted Allahu akbar (God is greatest).

Prosecutors had demanded death sentences, accusing the Bulgarians of infecting the children with HIV-contaminated blood as part of an experiment to find a cure for Aids.

But Luc Montagnier, the French doctor who is credited with discovering HIV, had said that the epidemic probably emerged in the hospital in 1997, a year before the staff arrived, and spread as a result of insanitary practices.

His testimony was rejected by a commission of court-appointed Libyan doctors. Tripoli had initially claimed that the infections were part of a conspiracy by the CIA and Israeli intelligence, but backed away from those allegations.

Ramdane Ali Mohamed, whose sister Hiba died of Aids, said: The verdict is fair. What they did is a crime against humanity. They planted a bomb inside our children.

The cases were raised during the visit to the European Union last week by Colonel Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, when Romano Prodi, the President of the European Commission, said he hoped that a Oquick and fair settlement could be found.

The Bulgarian media had speculated that if the medics were sentenced to death, Colonel Gaddafi, who is eager to improve relations with Europe, might pardon them.

The defendants say they were tortured with electricity and beaten while in custody. Two of the women said that they had been raped.

It's a shocking verdict, Othmane Bizanti, a defence lawyer, said. My clients expected to be convicted for dereliction of duty and sentenced to prison terms, not death.

* * *

San Francisco Chronicle
June 6, 2004

Bulgarians sentenced to death in bizarre Libyan HIV case
By Juliette Terzieff

Like the plot line of a cheesy Cold War spy novel, the lives of five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor -- accused and convicted in a diabolically farcical five-year trial of intentionally infecting over 400 children with HIV as part of a CIA and Israeli intelligence plot -- now depend on the whims of Moammar Khadafy, Libya's viciously mercurial dictator with a passion for fashion.

With the plot hitting its climactic point, politicians and diplomats around the globe are vocalizing their ideas on how the story should end.

On May 6, the six defendants were sentenced to death by firing squad -- with a 60-day period to launch an appeal -- in a trial observers say flew in the face of human rights in every respect. Nine Libyan health workers also charged in the case were acquitted the same day.

Residents in the Libyan town of Banghazi celebrated in the streets with dance and song; in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, outrage and disbelief were channeled into candle light vigils and prayer ceremonies.

"It's like your worst nightmare or a bad movie, only this is real, and all you want to do is cry," said Sofia resident Diana Meneva, who joined the medics' family members and hundreds of concerned Bulgarians at a peaceful protest outside the parliament building last month.

The medical professionals dreamed of better lives. For the Bulgarians, hailing from a small Balkan nation where the average monthly salary is a paltry $165, and the Palestinian coming from an area where unemployment is estimated to be above 60 percent, the chance to work in Libya was a boon -- they would earn a salary more than triple what they could get at home.

With visions of bright future prospects in their heads, the five Bulgarian nurses (Kristiana Malinova Valcheva, Nasya Stojcheva Nenova, Valentina Manolova Siropulo, Valya Georgieva Chervenyashka and Snezhanka Ivanova Dimitrova) and Palestinian Dr. Ashraf Ahmad Jum'a arrived in Banghazi in 1998 to work at the al-Fateh Children's Hospital.

Less than a year later, in February 1999, the medics were arrested without warning along with dozens of foreign medical workers after 393 children at al-Fateh were found to have HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. All but the six now facing death were released.

Nurse Valcheva's husband, Dr. Zdravko Georgiev, employed in another Libyan city by a South Korean company, raced to be by his wife's side, only to find himself arrested and charged as a co-conspirator. After more than four years in jail, Georgiev was released for "time served" on May 6 -- the day his wife received the death sentence.

"Libya has severe deficiencies in their medical system including a lack of qualified personnel and for years has recruited foreigners," said Bulgarian Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs Lubomir Ivanov. "It appears these medics were selected for trial in the belief that Bulgaria is a small country incapable of defending its citizens."

Investigations into the case by Amnesty International found that in the first nine months of their incarceration, the medics were allowed access to embassy representatives only three times.

"Not all of the defendants were present at the first two meetings. For example, Nasya Stojcheva Nenova and Valya Georgieva Chervenyashka were not brought to the meeting on 25 February 1999, apparently because they exhibited scars of torture which they had undergone," said a 2004 Amnesty International report. "The Bulgarian defendants told Amnesty International delegates that those torturing them instructed them not to mention their treatment to their diplomatic representatives."

The defendants were tortured daily for the first three months of their captivity in efforts to elicit confessions -- torture that included electric shocks, being threatened by barking dogs, falaqa (beatings on the sole of the feet), suspension above the ground by their arms for hours on end, and in the case of two nurses, rape.

Interrogators had to do three takes of the video confession of the Palestinian doctor Jum'a, with beatings in between and after. When called upon by the public prosecutor to repeat his confession in person -- interrogators beat him again in the offices of the legal representative.

The medics gained access to a Libyan lawyer for the first time in February 2000, after their trial had already opened before the Peoples' Libyan Court.

Khadafy alleged that the medics were part of a CIA-Mossad plot to test out the effects of using HIV/AIDS as a weapon to destroy other countries.

Two years later, after numerous delays, their case was shifted to the Criminal Prosecution Service, where the foreigners launched complaints of torture before the new prosecutors. After examinations by a Libyan doctor, nine Libyan security personnel were brought up on charges and set to be tried alongside the medics.

"The court subsequently claimed it did not have jurisdiction to pass judgment on the torture allegations, yet they did have competency to try a case the basis for which was the confessions allegedly taken under that same torture? There is a complete lack of logic there," argued the Bulgarian deputy minister, Ivanov.

In another critical blow to the defense, the prosecutor instructed the judges' panel to ignore the September 2003 testimony of a French doctor, Luc Montagnier, co-discoverer of HIV. Montagnier visited al-Fateh hospital and co- authored an exhaustive report with Italian AIDS researcher Vittorio Colizzi on the cause of the infections, which according to the report began in 1997 -- a full year before any of the accused arrived in Libya.

Their conclusion? The infections were an inevitable outcome of inadequate equipment, unskilled staff and the reuse of unsterilized needles.

"This tragedy is probably due to negligence," Montagnier testified. "This can happen not only in this hospital, but in many others, particularly pediatric hospitals, because children are more vulnerable to infection, even by very small quantities of blood."

More than two dozen of the children have since contracted AIDS and died.

For years Khadafy enjoyed taunting the West and reveled in its impotent scorn, but the court's decision comes at a time when the North African leader is on a extensive public relations campaign to change his international image.

In September, Bulgaria and Great Britain led a successful campaign at the United Nations Security Council to remove sanctions against Libya -- which currently holds stewardship of the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

In December, Libya announced its desire to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction program and has since turned over planeloads of equipment to the United States. Khadafy also agreed to pay compensation to victims of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and the 1989 bombing of a French airliner of the Niger desert, both carried out by Libyan agents.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and White House spokesman Richard Boucher have joined a chorus of European politicians urging Libya to review the trial carefully and answer charges of human rights abuse in the case.

Libya has suggested that the Americans look into their own human rights record in light of events at the Abu Graib prison in Iraq before instructing others on how to behave.

Yet despite the acrimonious exchanges, Bulgarian officials -- who have launched an appeal against the death sentences in the Libyan courts and called for help from other democratic nations -- believe Khadafy has yet to issue his final word on the subject.

"It's always difficult to predict what comes next in a country like Libya, " says Ivanov. "Pressure needs to be brought to bear because Khadafy is certainly trying to improve his image -- but this is sickening, it's playing with the lives of six innocent people."

* * *

Al Jazeera
May 6, 2004

Death sentences in Libya HIV case

Defendants blame HIV polluted blood on negligence

Death sentences were given to five Bulgarian medics and a Palestinian doctor by a Libyan criminal court on Thursday, according to Bulgarian radio.

The six were found guilty of deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with the deadly HIV virus.

The health workers, detained in Tripoli in early 1999, were convicted of giving 426 Libyan children at a Benghazi hospital HIV, the virus believed to cause AIDS, with contaminated blood products.

The Libyan verdicts give the defendants the right to appeal.

Bulgarian condemnation

The Bulgarian government condemned the Libyan ruling, and called for a strong reaction from its Western partners the EU, NATO, and the United States.

"I'm shocked by the verdicts. The government's official position is that we are not going to accept them," Justice Minister Anton Stankov, speaking on behalf of the government, told a news conference.

Conspiracy theory

When the health workers were arrested, Libyan leader Colonel Muammar al-Qadhafi had accused them of acting on the orders of foreign intelligence. Libyan authorities claimed the plot was to spread HIV virus among 1000 Libyan children; in order to turn the Libyan people against their government.

Bulgarian medics were moved from jail to house arrest in 2002.

The defendants admitted they were linked to foreign intelligence in a police investigation. But they denied the testimonies before the court and said they were extracted from them under duress.

The Libyan National Security Court refused the case in 2002, saying it did not pertain to national security. The criminal court in Bangazi where the crime was committed, however, accepted it.

Political dimensions

The case triggered wide political debate. Bulgaria put pressure on several western states to intervene and convince Qadhafi to release the Bulgarian citizens.

"I'm shocked by the verdicts. The government's official position is that we are not going to accept them" Anton Stankov, Bulgarian Justice Minister

Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passy paid several visits to Libya, holding long negotiations with Libyan officials and visiting families of Libyan infected children.

Due to strong pressure on Libyan authorities, a Bulgarian lawyer was allowed to defend the defendants in Libyan court. It was the first time in Libya's history that a foreign lawyer is allowed to proceed before a Libyan court.

* * *

Associated Press
May 9, 2004

Libya slams US criticism of AIDS trial

Tripoli: Libya denounced the United States on Friday for its criticism of death sentences in a Libyan AIDS trial, saying the behaviour of US soldiers in Iraqi prisons has taken away the Americans' moral authority to lecture about rights abuses.

"America has no right to talk about human rights - or even animal rights," foreign ministry spokesman Hassouna Al Shawish said on Friday night.

The comments concerned a trial in eastern Libya on Thursday in which five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were sentenced to death on charges of intentionally infecting more than 400 Libyan children with the AIDS virus.

Western governments and human rights groups denounced the verdicts, saying they were based on false confessions obtained through torture, designed to draw attention away from unsanitary practices at Libyan hospitals. They demanded freedom for the sentenced foreigners.

"I think you know we've been very critical of Libyan violations of the legal and human rights of the Bulgarian medics. We find the verdict that was pronounced in the court to be unacceptable," U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Thursday. Al Shawish said Libya was incensed by Boucher's comments.

"We didn't want to politicise the issue, but those comments pushed us to respond," he said. "America has to be sorry and ashamed for what happened at Abu Gharib prison in Iraq instead of being sorry for the verdict."

"We don't accept interference in judiciary matters," he said. "Who gave America the right to be the judge of the world's courts?"

* * *

Al Jazeera
May 9, 2004

Bulgaria to appeal Libyan verdict

Bulgaria will appeal against the death sentences handed down by a Libyan court on five Bulgarian nurses for infecting hundreds of children with AIDS.

"We have advised the defence to immediately take action to file an appeal against the verdict," Bulgarian Justice Minister Anton Stankov said on Saturday.

A court in the northern Libyan city of Benghazi on Thursday had sentenced the five nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death by firing squad for spreading AIDS in a children's hospital.

"We agree with neither the death sentences handed down nor the so-called guilt of the nurses," Stankov said.

The accused were convicted of having deliberately infected more than 400 children with the HIV virus that can lead to AIDS by injecting them with tainted blood products at the pediatric hospital in Benghazi.

Forty-three of the children have since died.

All defendants pleaded not guilty to the charges when the trial opened four years ago and the verdicts were postponed several times.

Confessions 'forced'

Two of the Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor said during the trial they were tortured into making confessions.

Libyan leader Muammar al-Qadhafi had said in 2001 the case might be one of a CIA or Mossad plot to experiment with the AIDS virus.

The lawyers of the defendants say their clients have been made scapegoats for inadequate sterilisation of instruments at the hospital.

The European Union and the United States both condemned the guilty verdicts. Washington called it "unacceptable."

But a Libyan spokesman said, "The United States has no right to speak of human rights."

Referring to the abuse of prisoners in a US-run jail in Iraq, Hasuna Shaush said: "Before voicing an opinion on the Benghazi verdict, the United States would have done better to apologise for Abu Ghraib."

* * *

Reuters
May 9, 2004

Libyans protest US criticism of HIV trial

Benghazi - Libyan protesters burnt the American flag in the coastal city of Benghazi on Sunday after the United States government criticised a death sentence imposed on six foreign medics for infecting children with HIV.

The five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were condemned to death after they were convicted of deliberately infecting 426 children with the virus that causes Aids. The US government called Thursday's verdict "unacceptable".

Hundreds of protesters marched through Benghazi on Sunday, most of them parents of children who had been infected at the city's hospital where the medics worked.

They waved photographs of Libyan infants with Aids and of Iraqi prisoners abused by US soldiers at a Baghdad jail.

"America rejected the Libyan court verdict because the case involved Libyan children. America backs white Western people with blue eyes against Libyan children because they are Arabs and Muslims," said one protesting parent who gave his name only as Jamel.

"We are angry at the US contempt for our court verdict. It hurts us as bias against the rights of Arabs here in Libya as well as in Iraq with the scandalous abuses of prisoners in Abu Ghraib jail," said another parent, Mohamed Shaloush.

"America is humiliating us everywhere as Arabs and Muslims."

The six foreign medics plan to appeal. They say the Libyan government used them as scapegoats rather than admit the virus was caused by unhygienic standards and that their convictions were based on two confessions given under torture.

More than 40 of the infected children have died since the nurses were detained in 1999.

The European Union has also condemned the verdicts, fuelling speculation in Bulgaria that the medics might be pardoned by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who is keen to mend ties with the West.

The Libyan government said on Friday that America had "no moral authority anymore to talk about human rights" after the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal.

Police kept a low profile as the protesters burnt the US flag in front of the Italian consulate. Local officials say Italy is in charge of US consulate interests in Benghazi.

The US government is due to upgrade diplomatic ties with Libya by opening a liaison office in Tripoli. It relaxed its trade embargo last month after Gaddafi pledged to give up weapons of mass destruction.

* * *

Agence France-Presse
May 9, 2004

Libya to US: Don't tell us about safeguarding rights

Advertising Libya hit back at US condemnation of death sentences pronounced by a Libyan court on five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor for the spread of AIDS in a children's hospital. "The United States has no right to speak of human rights," government spokesman Hassuna Shaush told a press conference here late Friday.

Referring to the abuse of prisoners in a US-run jail in Iraq, Shaush said: "Before voicing an opinion on the Benghazi verdict, the United States would have done better to apologize for Abu Ghraib.

"The United States means that the death of more than 400 Libyan children is acceptable but the punishment of the guilty is unacceptable," he said.

"We did not want to politicize this matter, but the American reactions oblige us to reply."

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Thursday, hours after the sentences were passed: "We find the verdict that was pronounced in the court to be unacceptable."

He said the legal and human rights of the accused had been violated numerous times since the allegations were first made five years ago and vowed to continue to raise the matter with Libyan officials.

"We recognize the great human tragedy that occurred in Benghazi and our deepest sympathy is extended to the families of the 400 children who were infected with the HIV/AIDS virus," he said.

But he added that the accused, who have a right to appeal the verdicts, should be released and allowed to return home.

A Bulgarian doctor was also jailed for four years by the same court in a separate case.

Boucher said the US diplomats attached to the newly opened US interests section in Tripoli had attended the trial and would be following up on the matter with Libyan officials.

"We urge the government of Libya to take steps to resolve this case quickly," he said.

The lawyers for the defendants have said their clients are being used as scapegoats for inadequate sterilization of instruments at the pediatric hospital in Benghazi before the Bulgarians and the Palestinian arrived in 1998.


* * *

World Socialist Web Site
2 September 2004

Libyan government to execute foreign health workers
By Steve James

In a politically motivated frame-up, sustained in defiance of overwhelming scientific evidence and using evidence extracted under torture, a Libyan court has sentenced five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to be executed by firing squad. No date for their execution has yet been set.

The six health professionals were found guilty in May of deliberately infecting nearly 400 children in Benghazi with the HIV virus. Another Bulgarian doctor was given a four year suspended sentence for currency charges. The verdict is the culmination of a five-year campaign by the Libyan government to scapegoat health workers in Benghazi childrens hospital for the spread of HIV in Libya.

In February 1999, 23 Bulgarians were arrested in secret, along with health workers of other nationalities. Information on the exact identity and condition of those arrested was kept from the Bulgarian government for months. They were not charged. Eventually it emerged that all but six, five women and one man, had been released, but had been deprived of their passports by the Libyan authorities.

In August 1999 a Bulgarian diplomat was told that the six were working for an external power, not Bulgaria, and would be charged with murder. In February 2000, the six were charged with commissioning acts within Libyan territory leading to indiscriminate killing for the purposes of subversion, conspiring in a premeditated crime, and deliberately infecting 393 children at the Al Fateh Childrens Hospital in Benghazi. The Bulgarians were also charged with acting against the norms and traditions of Libya by having illicit sexual relations, distilling and drinking alcohol and trading foreign currency.

Thereafter, the Libyan authorities set about securing confessions from the defendants through the use of torture. The Palestinian and Bulgarian defendants were beaten with sticks and rubber hoses for extended periods, left without food or water and given electric shocks. Two of the women reported being raped. Confessions were extracted, which subsequently became the basis of the legal case. Under torture, Nurse Nassya Nenova admitted to injecting children with contaminated products. She withdrew her confession in 2001. One of the women, Snezhana Dimitrova, is reported to be in a very bad physical condition. Dr Zdravki Georgiev, married to one of the accused nurses, Kristiyana Vulcheva, and who moved to Libya as soon as the accusations were made, has also had health problems.

When the parents of Dr Ashraf Hasan, the accused Palestinian, met him they did not recognise the 34-year-old. According to Hasans account, which is backed by a hospital report, he had been electrocuted for hours, sodomised with a broom handle, dragged around a field, hung upside down, burnt and beaten. He collapsed in court April 2001. The other detainees are Valentina Siropoulo, a nurse with 20 years experience, and Valya Chervenyashka.

As early as March 2000, it was proposed by Professor Luc Montaigner, one of those credited with first identifying the HIV virus, of the Institut Pasteur in Paris that the most likely source of the epidemic was in-hospital infection. This was confirmed by another HIV authority, Professor Luc Perrin of Geneva University, who gave a report to the Libyan authorities in Benghazi. Perrin stated categorically his view that the HIV epidemic in Benghazi hospital was solely due to nosocomial (in-hospital) infection, probably due to unsafe medical practices such as badly sterilised, or repeated use of, instruments and syringes. Both experts were contacted by the Bulgarian government. Both offered to give evidence at any trial.

These basic facts were all established more than four years ago. In the intervening years much more scientific evidence has been presented showing the concocted character of the case being made by the Libyan authorities. In 2001, Russian Academician Vadim Pokrovsky, head of the Russian Federal Centre for AIDS Prevention, insisted that intentional infection by medical professionals is absurd. Pokrovsky pointed out a similar case of infection due to bad practices in a Kalmykia hospital in 1998.

In 2003, Luc Montaigner and another HIV authority, Professor Vittorio Colizzi, testified for the defence in another phase of the protracted legal proceedings. The academics stated categorically that the HIV epidemic in the Benghazi hospital predated the arrival of the Bulgarian medics. Montaigner stated that the type of virus identified in the infected children was a rare variant usually found in West Africa. One infected child arriving at the hospital was the likely source of the outbreak. Infection of the others could have come through a number of means?injections, any other penetration of the skin, or even use of an unsterilised oxygen mask. The experts also pointed out that the disease has an incubation period of several years, further exonerating the accused medics who only arrived in Libya in 1998.

Despite the weight of scientific opinion and growing international concern, the Libyan regime has persisted in victimising the medics. In court, Libyan prosecutors sought to question evidence of torture, undermine the scientific evidence presented to them, and smear the accused for additional crimes such as being able to speak Arabic. At the same time as the medics were found guilty, nine Libyan security officers were found not guilty on charges of torture.

In conditions when the countrys health system has been starved of investment and resources because of international sanctions, which were still in force in 1999, there would inevitably be real scientific problems in identifying the source of an HIV epidemic. Much of Libyas social infrastructure decayed during the years of sanctions, which were first imposed by the United States in 1986, and the United Nations in 1992 under the pretext of combating terrorism. To a great extent then, blame for the disaster, and the fate of the medics, can be laid at the door of the US government and the UN.

But the Libyan governments primary concern has been to prevent any investigation of the real origins of the outbreak, particularly the extent of its own responsibility for the dangerous conditions in the hospital. In 2001 at an AIDS conference, Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gadhaffi claimed that the CIA had engineered the HIV outbreak, and the nurses had infected Libyan children on the orders of the CIA or the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad. This is, internally, the line to which the government has stuck, despite being unable to produce a shred of serious evidence to back up Gadhaffis original claims.

In the period when Libya was a pariah state, isolated by the collapse of the Soviet Union, there is no question but that Libya was the target of US and UK intelligence operations, including plans to assassinate Gadhaffi. Benghazi itself, Libyas second city, a major commercial centre with a population of nearly one million people, was bombed by US planes in 1986. But in a land of close media control, where patronage is handed out by the regime in the manner of medieval favours, repeated scares, real and imaginary, are an important means of maintaining rule.

By 1999, Libya was on the way to international rehabilitation, having just handed over two state officials for trial for the Lockerbie bombing. The government had made it known to the US, the European Union, and their allies that Libya was seeking a rapprochement with its former tormentors to allow investment in the countrys huge but decrepit oil industry. In October of 2001, the countrys intelligence minister met a number of leading US and UK officials to chart Libyas course back into the Ointernational community.

Earlier this year, Gadhaffi finally got his reward with the removal of all sanctions by the US?a move necessary to stop UK and European companies snapping up Libyas oil related investment opportunities. Under conditions in which Iraq has become a military and political disaster for US imperialism, and oil profits are not emerging in the quantities expected, Libya has become the favoured world location for new oil investment and a train of political leaders and oil company CEOs have beaten a path to Gadhaffis tent.

Throughout this process, the government has maintained an internal campaign to channel the enormous concern the HIV outbreak has caused amongst the Benghazi population against the medics. During the 2004 trial, 100 armed guards were deployed outside the courthouse. The government has also played on general hatred and suspicion for the US government, particularly in the aftermath of the attack on Iraq.

Typical of Libyan internal propaganda was a comment of government spokesperson, Hassuna Shaush. Shaush complained, Before voicing an opinion on the Benghazi verdict the United States would have done better to apologise for Abu Ghraib ... the United States means that the death of more than 400 Libyan children is acceptable but the punishment of the guilty is unacceptable.

Victimising foreign workers is a tested technique of the government. At moments of crisis during the 35 years of his rule, Gadhaffi has repeatedly targeted or expelled the large numbers of immigrant workers needed to sustain the infrastructure developed by Libya during the years of its relative wealth in the 1970s and early 1980s. Usually the targets are African and Arab workers from neighbouring states.

The fact that Bulgarians have been targeted reflects the changing weight of LibyaOs international priorities. There are 6,000 Bulgarians working in Libya, including large numbers of privately recruited health workers. But trade with Bulgaria has collapsed since the collapse of the Soviet bloc. In 1990, Bulgarian exports to Libya were worth $224 million annually. By 2001, this had plummeted to $0.8 million. For its part, the Bulgarian government has made sustained efforts to exert diplomatic pressure on Libya but has always held back from publicly attacking the regime that has imprisoned its citizens.

Shortly after the verdict, hundreds of doctors and medical staff demonstrated in the Bulgarian capital Sophia, while smaller protests were also held in the towns of Blagoevgrad, Sliven, Stara Zagora, Varna and Pernik.

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Jamahiriya News Agency (Jana)
English News Bulletin
12 January 2005

The GPC announces commitment to fair compensation of the families of Libyan Children infected with AIDS virus

Serte - The General People's Congress announced the commitment to the fair compensation for the families of the Libyan children infected with AIDS virus, and to apply the toughest penalties against those convicted in this ugly crime.

In a statement issued at its final session Wednesday night, the GPC underlined the importance to make the world aware of the magnitude of the tragedy to which the Libyan children infected with HIV virus were subjected, and regarded as an ugly crime against humanity.

* * *

Reuters
March 23, 2005

Gaddafi says will not release Bulgarian nurses
By Paul de Bendern

ALGIERS - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on Wednesday rejected calls from the West for the release of Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death for injecting children with the HIV virus.

"Everyone from the West comes to Libya, and says to me release the Bulgarian nurses. This means that our children died and this was not considered as important," Gaddafi said.

"I swear to God I will not release them," he told an Arab League summit in Algiers, attended by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were sentenced to death last year after being found guilty of deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with the deadly HIV virus that causes AIDS.

The verdicts were based on confessions that the nurses, who remain jailed, say were extracted under torture.

They prompted strong protests from the United States and the European Union, which Bulgaria aims to join in 2007, and have hampered Libya's efforts to renew normal ties with the West after decades of diplomatic isolation.

"When the court sentenced the Bulgarians to death by hanging there were demonstrations (in Benghazi) supporting this sentence," Gaddafi said. "They (the West) consider our people cheap."

"The 47 children are dead and the others are still on the death bed," Gaddafi said. "The Bulgarian nurses and a physician said to be Palestinian injected ... children in the children's hospital in Benghazi with the AIDS virus."

The nurses, who have been imprisoned since 1999, say they are being used as scapegoats to prevent a backlash against medical authorities at the Benghazi hospital where they worked.

Late last year Tripoli suggested it would release the nurses in exchange for financial compensation, but Bulgaria refused, saying any payout would be an admission of guilt.

The AIDS epidemic killed at least 40 of the 426 infected children and caused outrage in Libya.

Bulgaria's justice minister refused to comment on Gaddafi's speech before a March 31 appeal hearing in Libya's supreme court. "Until the court rules, there will be no statements," Justice Minister Anton Stanchev told news agency BTA.

AIDS experts have testified the epidemic began before the medics arrived at the hospital, possibly due to the unhygienic handling of needles and blood products.

In January, nine Libyan police officers and a physician appeared in a Tripoli court on charges of torturing the five Bulgarian nurses to confess they infected the children.

Libyan lawyers and diplomats see the public trial of police officers as a move intended to counter foreign criticism of the Tripoli authorities.

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Jamahiriya News Agency (Jana)
English News Bulletin
March 24, 2005

The Leader cautions to the danger of Western behaviour through political perspective

Algeris - The Leader Muammar al-Gathafi, cautioned to the menace of Western behaviour from the perspective of political interests, with laws and rules issued by its courts and those of other countries.

In his morning speech at the Arab summit in Algeria, the Leader cited two examples, the Bulgarian nurses sentenced in the case of Benghazi children, and the Libyan citizen, " Abdul basset al-Maqrahi" sentenced to life imprisonment in the Pan Am case, by saying; " We have the tragedy of your fraternal country, our countries are all suffering tragedies, each one with its own tragedy. There was a tragedy in Benghazi city, Bulgarian nurses, and a doctor said to be a Palestinian, they injected 400 children with HIV, at Benghazi hospital, 47 of whom had died up to now, and the rest on the bed of death.

We held a trial, and I personally intervened and asked the judiciary to please defer the sentencing so there will be no excuses. Bulgaria asked to be present, we told them to be present, internationalists asked to be present, we agreed, and lawyers from abroad attended as well. All of them were at the court, and the court sentenced to death the medical team which caused the death of 47 children, and the rest will die.

What happened? Every Westerner comes to me , asks me to release the Bulgarian nurses. This means it is not important when our children die. Yet, "Abdul basset al-Maqrahi" who all the world say he is a political hostage who must be freed, they say no, because he killed children and killed people on the Pan Am, so he must remain in life imprisonment.

How come they ask us today to free those whom they killed our children, I swear to God, some Western officials come and say we want to take them back, so let them be free.

The day Benghazi sentenced the medical team to imprisonment, the whole of Benghazi took to the streets in support of the sentence. But they say we are indifferent to your people.. they bugger off. Therefore, they consider our people, as sheep, and have no public opinion.

They say; Our public opinion cannot tolerate execution, and you wanted to execute them. Release them quickly, we said; what about our children? They said this is a humanitarian tragedy, we will give you some medicine!"

* * *

BBC News
March 29, 2005

Libyan key to Bulgarian nurses' fate
By Gabriel Partos
BBC South-East Europe analyst

Libya's High Court of Appeal has started its hearings into the case of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who have been sentenced to death for infecting more than 400 children with the potentially deadly virus, HIV, in a hospital in Benghazi.

The defendants, who have been protesting their innocence, have been in jail since 1999.

Attempts to ensure their freedom have concentrated on diplomatic moves as well as potential financial deals.

But what chance is there for their release, given that Libya's leader, Muammar Gaddafi, appeared to rule out it happening under pressure from the West?

International support

Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passy has been making use of his latest visit to the US at least, in part, to lobby for further international support for Bulgaria's attempts to secure the release of the five nurses.

In the past few days, Mr Passy has had an opportunity to discuss the issue with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Bulgaria has previously received the backing of both the US and the UN - as well as the European Union, which the country is set to join in three years' time.

There was widespread international condemnation for Tripoli when the five Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor were sentenced to death a year ago.

That was partly because the convictions went in the face of expert witness testimony which argued that the HIV infections, caused by poor hygiene, had predated the defendants' arrival at the Benghazi hospital.

The accused also argued that their earlier confessions - which they subsequently withdrew - had been extracted through torture.

Two months ago nine Libyan police officers and a physician appeared in court on charges of torture relating to this case.

Low-key tactics

These torture allegations may now be taken into account at the hearings before Libya's High Court of Appeal, which court officials said will last until the end of May.

It was in the run-up to these hearings that Sofia has renewed its diplomatic offensive in the US and elsewhere.

But Bulgaria has been treading carefully on the international stage, preferring quiet diplomacy to high-profile rhetoric.

As Bulgarian Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg put it last week, the less the issue is politicised, the better it is for the accused and their chances of release.

Mr Saxe-Coburg's remarks came as the Bulgarian parliament decided not to adopt a formal motion calling for the release of the accused.

The debate came just a couple of days after Mr Gaddafi had told an Arab League summit in Algiers that the defendants would not be set free in response to Western pressure.

But he made a more conciliatory gesture a few hours later when he invited Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov to visit Libya.

Libya's leader does not want to be seen to be acting under international pressure.

But Libya's international rehabilitation from its previous pariah status cannot be completed until an acceptable solution is found to the fate of those convicted over the Benghazi mass HIV infections case.

Compensation?

Libyan officials have suggested that the price for their release might be Bulgaria paying compensation to the families of the 47 children who have died and the more than 400 infected with the HIV virus.

Sofia is opposed to that on several grounds.

It would amount to an acceptance of responsibility for something neither the Bulgarian nurses nor Bulgaria were to blame for.

And it would suggest an equivalence with Libya's responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing of 1988 - the killings of hundreds of passengers on an American airliner - for which Tripoli is now finally paying compensation.

On the other hand, Sofia may come under pressure to make a gesture - perhaps behind the scenes - by writing off some of Libya's debt.

It has much at stake, not least of which is the safety and continued employment of several thousand Bulgarians who currently work in Libya.

And with parliamentary elections just a few months away, securing the release of the Bulgarian nurses would be a significant political achievement.

* * *

Reuters
April 12, 2005

Libya to put trade embargo on Bulgaria over nurses
By Salah Sarrar

TRIPOLI - Libya will impose a trade and investment embargo on Bulgaria for what it calls Sofia's failure to take responsibility for the infection of hundreds of Libyan children with HIV, a government official said on Tuesday. Tripoli blames the infections on five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, who were convicted last year of deliberately infecting more than 400 children at a hospital in Benghazi.

"Libya will boycott Bulgarian companies and shut the doors of all investment and trade opportunities for Bulgarian companies because the Bulgarian government has ignored demands to take responsibility for the action of its citizens in the HIV case," the official told Reuters. Bulgarian Deputy Foreign Minister Gergana Grancharova told state radio BNR: "We have first to clarify the situation and then to comment."

The Libyan official, who did not want to be identified, also cited pressure on authorities from the families of the infected children for Tripoli's move against Sofia. He did not say when the embargo would become effective. "The boycott decision was also prompted by the Bulgarian government's campaign to tarnish Libya's image," he added, without elaborating.

The medics, who have been sentenced to death by firing squad, insist they are innocent and that the only evidence against them were confessions extracted under torture. The supreme court will rule in late May on an appeal by the five nurses and the doctor.

Asked why Tripoli was taking the embargo decision ahead of the ruling, another official said the move was not related to the court's verdict. "It is a political decision," he said. At least 40 of the 426 infected children have died of AIDS, increasing widespread outrage in Libya over the case.

The United States and the European Union have criticised the verdicts, which have impeded Tripoli's efforts to emerge from decades of diplomatic isolation and renew ties with the West. AIDS experts testified to a lower court last year that the epidemic started before the nurses arrived at the hospital in eastern Libya, possibly due to poor hygiene or the unsafe use of syringes and blood products. The nurses have been in prison since 1999.

Tripoli has said that if Sofia pays financial damages to the victims' families, builds a modern hospital in Libya, and provides medical treatment in Europe, it might release them. Sofia has rejected paying financial compensation because it says the nurses are not guilty. Last month, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi rejected calls from the West to release them. It was not clear what impact the embargo would have on trade with oil-rich Libya where a Libyan source told Reuters Bulgarian firms are involved mainly in farm and irrigation projects. No official trade figures were immediately available.

* * *

The Guardian
May 5, 2005

Bad science leads to rough justice
Libya will execute foreigners for giving HIV to children unless an appeal succeeds, says David Adam

In 1999 a Bulgarian doctor called Zdravko Georgiev was working in southern Libya when he was told his wife had been arrested. Kristiyana was a nurse at a children's hospital in the northern town of Benghazi, where hundreds of the young patients were found to have been mysteriously infected with HIV. More arrests followed - four other Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor - while Georgiev himself was taken away several days later.

Six years on, he lives under the protection of the Bulgarian embassy in Tripoli. After more than a year of being held with no access to lawyers or the outside world, the medics were charged with deliberately infecting 400 children in their care with HIV, at least 40 of whom have since died of Aids-related illnesses.
It was undoubtedly a tragedy, but were the foreign health workers to blame? No, says Luc Montagnier, the Paris virologist who co-discovered HIV and was allowed into the Benghazi hospital to investigate.

He insists the outbreak has all the hallmarks of accidental cross-contamination, where poor hygiene and ineffective sterilisation procedures allowed contaminated blood to be spread between patients from a single infected child. "This was a very sad accident but it was not a crime," Montagnier says.
Last year, a Libyan court disagreed and declared the foreigners guilty. Zdravko Georgiev, who had never even worked at the hospital, was released with a suspended sentence. Kristiyana and the others were sentenced to death by firing squad. Libyan leader Muammar Gadafy says he believes the medics are guilty, though he has offered to reconsider their fate if Libya is paid ?3bn compensation and Britain frees the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.
Kristiyana and the other five - Valya Chervenyashka, Snezhana Dimitrova, Nasya Nenova, Valentina Siropulo and Ashraf Ahmad Jum'a - now face their last chance. Libya's supreme court is due to announce its verdict on their final appeal on May 31. Observers are not hopeful. Libya, they say, needs a scapegoat. "If the Bulgarian nurses are found innocent, then the guilt goes on the Libyan medical staff of the Benghazi Hospital," Montagnier says.

In a bizarre twist, 10 policemen involved in the investigation go on trial in Libya next week, accused of torturing the foreign workers, who say that was why they signed confessions - the only hard evidence.

Scientists are furious at the way the expert opinion of their community was ignored in the case. Leading virologists from across the world have sent an open letter to Gadafy urging him to commute the sentences. An editorial in Nature said that events in Libya "should chill the blood of anyone who cares for justice and the use of scientific evidence in its name".

Thomas Lehner, an HIV expert at King's College London who signed the Gadafy letter, says: "It's a travesty of justice. The notion that this doctor and these nurses were deliberately infecting children is just totally absurd. From the humane point of view there was no reason they should do it, and from the scientific point of view there is no evidence they did."

Vittorio Colizzi, a molecular pathologist at Tor Vergata University in Rome, who helped Montagnier investigate events at the hospital, says: "We were supposed to have free access to all the materials and data to make an objective study. But officials tried to block us at every step. Science itself has been on trial here and lost."

Montagnier and Colizzi both appeared as expert witnesses at the trial. Montagnier says: "We produced a report and testified before the court, but after that the court decided to ask for a counter report from five Libyan doctors who are not very aware of HIV. The court used that report and not ours. How can they justify that? The lives of six people are at stake."

Colizzi says the evidence uncovered by their investigation meant the case should never have reached trial. For starters, hospital records showed some of the children were infected before the foreign workers arrived in 1998. Others caught the virus only after they had been arrested - including one HIV positive baby not even born until the health workers were behind bars.

The chief scientific evidence presented by the prosecution was an analysis of HIV virus samples in two vials allegedly found in the home of one of the nurses. In the court, a Libyan doctor presented the vials along with the results of an antibody test called a Western blot analysis, which he said proved the HIV outbreak started from stocks secretly kept by the foreign medics.

Montagnier said the Western blot results were so scrambled they were meaningless and planned to reanalyse the vial viruses using PCR, a more powerful comparative tool. But hospital officials never made the vials available.

Montagnier and Colizzi were able to take blood samples from many of the children, where they found compelling evidence of contamination. Many of the children were infected with other viruses, including hepatitis C. "This is an indication of bad hygiene as normally children have very low rates of hepatitis C," Montagnier says.

Could not the foreign medics have transmitted the hepatitis C along with HIV, if they deliberately injected the children? Unlikely, Montagnier says, because several different hepatitis C strains were discovered. In contrast, the HIV type was the same in each case - a rare and previously unrecorded strain that originated in west Africa when two existing viruses combined.

Incredibly, Montagnier says the scientific term for this wholly natural process, recombination, was mistranslated into Arabic for the court as "genetically modified" - implying a deliberate act. "This just showed they were not experts in HIV," Montagnier says.

Prosecutors also presented the fact that the virus found in the children was previously unidentified, again implying it had been deliberately introduced. "On the contrary, if this strain was already recorded in laboratories we could have concluded that someone could had taken the virus and injected it," Montagnier says. "But if it's a rare strain then it couldn't have been taken from a patient."

They also found further evidence of sloppy standards in the hospital. Two of the 50 staff were HIV positive - a rate way above normal. "I would say there was very little care about using material infected with HIV," Montagnier says.

None of this helped to sway the court's decision, so what can be done now? Joost Den Otter, a Dutch doctor who briefly visited the six imprisoned medics in February, on behalf of US group Physicians for Human Rights, says they are in a "desperate state".

Political pressure on Gadafy may help, but Montagnier says the best hope could be establishing a formal collaboration between Libya, Bulgaria and the EU to help the infected children and their families, and to fund research on the virus strain. "The problem is to find a solution in which nobody will lose face," he says.

* * *

Reuters
May 24, 2005

Libyan verdict in Bulgarian trial due June 7

TRIPOLI - Nine Libyan policemen and a physician charged with torturing Bulgarian and Palestinian medics to extract confessions will hear their verdicts on June 7, a Tripoli court said on Tuesday.
The defendants are charged with torturing five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to make them confess they deliberately infected hundreds of Libyan children with the HIV virus that causes AIDS in a hospital in the eastern city of Benghazi.
The six medical staff, who have been imprisoned since 1999, were sentenced to death by firing squad in May last year for deliberately infecting the children. More than 40 have died.
The Bulgarians and the Palestinian say they are innocent and were forced to confess. Libya's supreme court is expected to rule on their appeal on May 31. The court can either confirm the death sentences or call for a retrial.
Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov will visit the North African country on May 27 and is expected to raise the nurses' case with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
The United States and the European Union have denounced the verdicts.
While the case has not hurt Libya's re-entry into the international community after Gaddafi renounced a weapons of mass destruction programme, it has affected some cooperation with the European Union.
The casse is expected to become an issue in Bulgaria's June 25 general elections and could affect support for the ruling centrist party of ex-king Simeon Saxe-Coburg, who has insisted on a "quiet diplomatic approach."
Tuesday's torture trial lasted less than two hours, with both defence and prosecuton putting forward their cases.
Gaddafi is under intense pressure from the families of the children infected with the HIV virus. Some family members have gone on a hunger strike and others regularly demonstrate for the medics to be put to death.

* * *

Reuters
May 25, 2005

EU commissioner meets Libyan Gaddafi on medics
By Sebastian Alison

TRIPOLI - The European Union's external relations commissioner met Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on Wednesday to try to secure the release of six foreign medical
workers sentenced to death last year.
Benita Ferrero-Waldner met Gaddafi in an ornate, book-lined office in a heavily guarded compound in Tripoli to press for the release of the medical workers as both the EU and Libya seek to improve long-frozen relations.
Asked Gaddafi's reaction, she told Reuters: "He said that it is for the judiciary to take a decision and of course the Libyan population was very, very sensitive to this question."
The Libyan authorities say the six deliberately infected 426 children. They have been in jail since 1999 and were sentenced to death by firing squad last May, creating a major block to EU-Libya ties.
Ferrero-Waldner held out little hope of an immediate breakthrough after a meeting of more than an hour with Gaddafi, who wore dark red robes and a traditional Libyan hat.
But she told Reuters on her flight back to Brussels that she had achieved her three main aims, namely to meet the families of the infected children, to visit the prisoners, and to take up the case with Gaddafi and Prime Minister Shokri Ghanem.
"I am somewhat more optimistic because I do see possibilities on the horizon how this question could be resolved in the not too distant future, but the situation remains
extremely difficult," she said.
She left on her surprise visit to the North African state late on Monday and met four of the five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian medical worker in jail on Tuesday, as well as children they are accused of infecting with the AIDS virus.
It was the first time a top level EU representative has seen the jailed workers. Bulgaria is on course for EU membership.
The European Union does not accept the evidence under which they were convicted on scientific grounds, and is opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances.

HOSPITAL TOUR
Ferrero-Waldner toured the hospital in the eastern city of Benghazi which saw an outbreak of HIV/AIDS in 1999, meeting children suffering from the disease and their families as well as Libyan medical staff.
She told Gaddafi: "I was deeply moved by seeing the children and families. The scourge of AIDS is a terrible thing but we want to work in partnership with you to give them the best possible treatment."
The EU is to give the Benghazi hospital European technology and expertise to treat HIV/AIDS sufferers, and Ferrero-Waldner's visit was partly designed as a gesture of solidarity with Libya.
Her visit came as the two sides seek to improve relations following a Libyan decision in 2003 to dismantle its nuclear programme, and an agreement to pay compensation for two airliner bombings blamed on Libya.
Gaddafi visited Brussels last October at the invitation of Romano Prodi, then president of the EU's executive Commission, and set up his trademark tent in a state guest house garden.
The Bulgarians and the Palestinian say they are innocent and were forced to confess under torture. Libya's supreme court is expected to rule on their appeal on May 31.
A Tripoli court began the trial on Tuesday of nine Libyan policemen and a physician charged with torturing them to extract confessions. The court said it would give its verdict on June 7.
The defendants are charged with torturing the six to make them confess they deliberately infected the children.
Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov will visit Tripoli on May 27 at Gaddafi's invitation and is expected to raise the case. Bulgaria has called the verdicts on the medics "unfair and absurd" and has insisted the charges be dropped.
Libya has said it wants to join the Euro-Mediterranean partnership, an EU initiative to boost political and economic links between the bloc and its Mediterranean neighbours.
Resolving the issue of the medics is a condition if the EU is to give Tripoli the green light to join.

* * *

Reuters
May 26, 2005

Bulgarian nurses fearfully await Libyan appeal
By Sebastian Alison

TRIPOLI - The purpose-built Libyan prison block seems comfortable enough. Austere, mostly windowless and surrounded by a five-metre wall topped with barbed wire, it looks like a cross between a bunker and a Mediterranean villa.
But its most famous inmates -- five female Bulgarian nurses jailed since 1999 and sentenced to death last year for deliberately infecting 426 children with the HIV virus that leads to AIDS -- appear depressed beyond measure.
On May 31, a court will hear their appeal against the death sentences. In the run-up to the hearing, a welter of diplomacy is under way to secure their release. The future of Libya's rapprochement with the European Union hinges on their fate.
"We in the European Union are trying to do everything we can to get your case reviewed and get you out as soon as possible," European External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner told four of the five nurses in the Jdaida jail on Tuesday.
"You are not forgotten at all," she said as a small visiting group from Brussels, including this correspondent, were allowed to see them.
The two journalists accompanying her were not allowed to talk to the nurses, who appeared physically fit.
But the EU visitors said they were desperately worried about them after years in jail for what many call a tragic accident caused by lack of experience, not malice.
Ashraf Alhajouj, a Palestinian medic also sentenced in the same case, and held in Jdaida with other death row prisoners, was a picture of stress. The Libyan public seems convinced of their guilt, despite the separate trial of policemen and a doctor accused of torturing the medics into confession.
But a different picture emerges in the hospital in the eastern city of Benghazi, where the epidemic occurred.
Libyan doctors there say they had little experience in 1999 of preventing the spread of AIDS, easily transmitted during blood transfusions or injections without proper precautions.

EUROPEAN EXPERTISE
Specialists from across the EU have been quietly offering expertise and experience to the Benghazi hospital, carefully stressing they are doing it for humanitarian reasons and not because of the jailed medical staff.
Asked if their presence was appreciated, Achris Ahmed, director of Libya's National Centre for Infectious Diseases Prevention and Control, replied: "Yes, certainly. At least now we have experienced doctors.
"We are setting up a system, we are building a house. It was a disorganised system before," he said, acknowledging the lack of experience when the outbreak occurred.
Italian Dr Guido Castelli, from Rome's Bambino Gesu hospital which has treated many of the sick children, is now training staff in Benghazi. As he spoke, the father of one of his patients greeted him as a friend.
Asked if the Libyans welcomed his help, he replied: "Yes, I think so. It takes time. The most important thing is to set up a system. We have to build capacity."
The sick children and their parents seem used to foreign visitors, bearing no apparent grudge despite the charges laid against the foreign medics.
Farah, an 8-year-old girl in a cheerfully decorated 4-bed ward, gave the EU Commissioner a beautiful smile as she toured the hospital to underline the EU's wish to help.
European involvement may be paying off. Asked if staff in Benghazi truly believed the foreign medics deliberately set out to destroy lives, Castelli said: "I think they have some doubt."

A MATTER FOR THE COURTS
But the government has yet to be convinced of their innocence or of the value of EU involvement in AIDS prevention.
"It still needs to be discussed. We will see how it's going. It's still only a proposal," said a Libyan foreign ministry official, who declined to be identified, when asked if the EU's plans to boost local skills were welcome.
Ferrero-Waldner says the convictions against the foreign medics are wrong on scientific grounds, quite apart from the EU's repugnance at the death penalty in any circumstances.
She took their case to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi as well as Prime Minister Shokri Ghanem and Foreign Minister Mohammed Abdel-Rahman Shalgam on a visit this week. But Gaddafi did not offer to intervene, saying it was a matter for the courts.
A Libyan court is due to pass judgment on June 7 on nine policemen and a physician accused of torturing the medics into confessing, in a possible sign that some realise there may be more to the case than so far acknowledged.
"I am somewhat more optimistic because I do see possibilities on the horizon how this question could be resolved in the not too distant future. But the situation remains
extremely difficult," Ferrero-Waldner said after meeting Gaddafi in his heavily-guarded compound in Tripoli.
Her optimism contrasted with the anguish of the Bulgarians as they face a few more days fearfully awaiting their appeal.

* * *

Reuters
May 30, 2005

Libya's improved image at risk over AIDS verdict
By Paul de Bendern

TRIPOLI - Libya's improved image after decades of isolation is at risk if its Supreme Court rules on Tuesday to put six foreign medics to death for infecting more than 400 children with HIV.
Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor will hear in their appeal in Tripoli whether they will be executed by firing squad or face a retrial after being convicted of deliberately giving HIV-tainted blood to 426 children at the Libyan hospital where they worked.
The European Union has called the death sentences a major obstacle to Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's push to renew ties with the West. The EU does not accept the evidence under which the medics were convicted on scientific grounds.
The medics, who have been in prison since 1999, say they were forced to confess under torture. They say the North African country has made them scapegoats rather than admit the infections were caused by poor hygiene standards.
Bulgaria, which is set to join the EU in 2007, could become a future obstacle for oil-producing Libya's relations with the bloc.
"If (Gaddafi) executes them, he loses all sorts of leverage on Bulgaria and the West," said Gergana Noutcheva, research fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies. "Plus, they want compensation. If they kill the people, they'll kiss the compensation goodbye," she told Reuters.
Gaddafi, a pariah for much of his 35-year rule because the West accused him of terrorism, has improved his standing after announcing in 2003 he would abandon the pursuit of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
Tripoli has also agreed to pay $2.7 billion to the families of Lockerbie crash victims and has taken responsibility for the 1988 Pan Am plane bombing over Scotland.
Following Libya's call that more compassion be shown to the victims, Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov toured the hospital in Benghazi, which saw the outbreak of AIDS/HIV in 1999. His last-ditch diplomatic push came only days after the EU's
external relations commissioner visited.

GADDAFI OFFERED WAY OUT
Gaddafi is under intense pressure from the children's families who demand punishment for a tragedy that Libya says has so far killed 50 children in a city where tribal roots run deep.
"We want a solution that satisfies the families of the dead children, the infected children still alive and those sentenced to death," Foreign Minister Abdel-Rahman Shalgam told Reuters.
Letting the nurses go without compensation could put the spotlight of guilt on the shortcomings of Libya's health system.
The Balkan state and its allies are seeking avenues to offer Gaddafi a way out of the standoff, by providing medical equipment, health experts, and some financial aid.
"We believe the action plan and the key international players, the United States and the EU, will meet the needs of the families in terms of treatment and medical help," Bulgaria's Deputy Foreign Minister Gergana Grancharova told Reuters.
This could possibly satisfy both parties -- Tripoli could call it compensation, Sofia a humanitarian gesture -- and possibly secure the nurses a retrial followed by a release.
EU diplomats say a retrial is more likely given that a separate trial is under way of nine Libyan policemen and a physician charged with torturing the medics into confessing.
Libya wants to join a EU economic partnership with Mediterranean region countries, which could bring it trade and aid. Resolving the issue of the medics is a condition if the EU is to give Tripoli approval to join.
"Of course we will go on talking and tomorrow will be a very crucial day. ... For the time being all my messages have been passed, now of course we have to see the Libyan reaction," said EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner.
No one expects a quick breakthrough through, least of all Ivan Nenov, husband of condemned nurse Nasya Nenova.
"I do not expect the case to be over on May 31, no matter whether the verdicts will be confirmed, or the trial be sent back for additional investigation," he told Reuters.
"I do not want to hold out hope for their release, because it hurts much more afterwards."
(Additional reporting by Michael Winfrey in Sofia and Sebastian Alison in Luxembourg).

* * *

Reuters
May 31, 2005

CHRONOLOGY-Libya HIV trial of Bulgarian medics

SOFIA - Libya's Supreme Court postponed until Nov. 15 a ruling on an appeal by five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor sentenced to death for deliberately
infecting hundreds of children with the HIV virus.
Following is a chronology of key events in the trial.
Feb 1999 - Nineteen Bulgarian medical workers in Libya detained in connection with an investigation into how children in a hospital in the eastern town of Benghazi became infected with the HIV virus. Thirteen medics are later freed.
Feb 2000 - Trial of six Bulgarians - five female nurses and a male doctor - and a Palestinian doctor and nine Libyan nationals opens at Tripoli People's Court. The foreigners are accused of deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with blood products contaminated with the HIV virus as part of conspiracy by foreign intelligence forces to undermine Libya's security. Libyan defendants face charges linked to negligence rather than intentional contamination.
June 2, 2001 - Defendants plead not guilty. Two Bulgarian nurses retract confessions, alleging they were obtained under torture by prison officers. Libya denies this.
Feb 17, 2002 - People's Court orders new probe, returning case to prosecutors on grounds of lack of evidence. The court, which rules in cases tied to national security, transfers case to ordinary court, citing insufficient evidence to prove defendants were involved in crime against Libyan security.
May 3 - Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passy meets Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to discuss trial.
Sept 3, 2003 - Prominent French doctor Luc Montagnier, who first detected the HIV virus, testifies before the court that the epidemic broke out a year before the arrival of the Bulgarians.
Sept 8 - Libyan prosecutors demand death sentences for the six Bulgarians and Palestinian accused after trial resumes. They demand that nine Libyan officers charged with torturing the medics be tried separately.
May 6, 2004 - Libyan court sentences five Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor to death for deliberately infecting 426 children. The Bulgarian doctor is acquitted of involvement in the HIV case. Nine Libyans charged with negligence are acquitted. Case of torture charges against the Libyan officers is transferred to a Tripoli court. Bulgaria, the European Union and the United States condemn the death sentences as "absurd".
Dec 5 - Libyan Foreign Minister Mohammed Abdel-Rahman Shalgam says the country will discuss reversing sentences if Bulgaria offers compensation. Bulgaria refuses, saying doing so would be an admission of guilt.
May 28, 2005 - Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov, on a visit to Libya, meets children with HIV in the eastern city of Benghazi and the nurses in a Tripoli prison.
May 31 - Libya's Supreme Court delays until Nov. 15 its ruling on an appeal against the death sentences, saying it needs time to complete deliberation of the case.

* * *

Reuters
May 31, 2005

Libya delays verdict on foreign medics AIDS case
By Lamine Ghanmi

TRIPOLI - Libya on Tuesday delayed until November 15 a ruling on an appeal by five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor sentenced to death for deliberately infecting hundreds of children with the HIV virus.
In a surprise decision, Supreme Court president judge Ali al-Alous said the ruling, due by Tuesday, was postponed to complete deliberation on the case, which has damaged Libya's ties with the European Union.
The medics, in prison since 1999 and not in court for the hearing, say they are innocent and confessed under torture. Nine police and a doctor are on trial for torturing them in a separate case in which a verdict is due next Tuesday.
"I welcome this decision. It indicates that the Libyan Supreme Court accepts the original trial needs additional consideration and that the death sentences...cannot be
confirmed," EU external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner told a news conference in Luxembourg.
Analysts say the delay will help an amicable deal. Libya says 50 infected children have died of AIDS so far.
"It's a good thing for the defendants and we are happy with the decision," defence lawyer Othman Ali Bizanti told Reuters.
The medics say the oil-producing North African country has made them scapegoats rather than admit the HIV infections of 426 children were caused by poor hygiene at the hospital in Benghazi, its second largest city.
Dozens of families of the children infected with HIV virus, which can cause AIDS, scuffled briefly with riot police as they tried to storm the court. More than 200 protesters were present.
"What we heard today is shameful. It would be better for us that they kill our children by firing squad rather than cause us agony like this," said Saida Tarhouni, whose two girls have HIV.
The EU - which Bulgaria is on course to join soon -- has called the death sentences a major obstacle to Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's push to renew ties with the West.
The EU rejects on scientific grounds the evidence on which the medics were convicted, and opposes the death penalty.
Legal experts said delaying a Supreme Court appeals verdict was extremely rare in Libya.

TIME FOR COMPROMISE?
Gaddafi is under intense pressure from the children's families, who demand punishment. He has criticised the West for ignoring the plight of the children.
"We are not happy with today's verdict because it prolongs the agony of the families ... it's an injustice," Abdullah Mahmoud al Maghrabi, lawyer for victims' families, told Reuters.
Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov visited the infected children last week and held talks with Gaddafi in the latest push from Europe to try to secure the release of the medics.
"He expects that a thorough and unbiased view of the circumstances in the case will lead to the reconsideration of the verdicts and the quick return of our medics to Bulgaria," Parvanov's office said.
Libya's government has said the long-running case could be settled if the victims were paid financial compensation, or so-called blood money -- a normal practice in Islamic countries.
The families then can waive a death sentence.
Bulgaria refuses, saying that amounts to admitting guilt.
The Balkan state and its allies are seeking to offer Gaddafi a way out by providing medical equipment, health experts and some financial aid for the hospital and the infected children.
The EU and Libya want to improve relations following Tripoli's decision in 2003 to dismantle its nuclear programme and an agreement to pay compensation for two airliner bombings in the 1980s blamed on Libya.
(Additional reporting by Salah Sarrar in Tripoli, Michael Winfrey in Sofia and Sebastian Alison in Luxembourg).

* * *

BBC News
May 31, 2005

Libya delays medics court ruling

Libya's Supreme Court has delayed a ruling on an appeal against the death penalty handed down to five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor.
The foreign medics were found guilty by Libyan courts last year of infecting more than 400 children with HIV.

The case has caused concern amongst foreign leaders, who have called for the release of the accused.

But angry relatives want the death sentence to be implemented if their demands for compensation are not met.

The six Libyan judges had been due to rule on Tuesday after two months of deliberations.

Their decision is now set for 15 November.

'Biased judgement'

The Supreme Court will either reaffirm the death penalty verdict against the group or allow the case to be retried in a criminal court.

The group were found guilty last year of deliberately infecting the Libyan children with HIV in the coastal town of Benghazi.

The defence lawyers of the foreign medics are demanding a retrial based on alleged false confessions extracted under torture, illegitimate material evidence and what they described as "biased judgement" by the criminal court.

The prosecuting lawyers insist their evidence is credible and want the Supreme Court to finalise the death penalty verdict.

The foreign medics claim they are innocent but angry relatives of the infected children believe they are guilty and want to see the death penalty implemented.

Libyan officials indicate that if the families reach a compensation settlement with Bulgaria or the European Union, the death sentences against the foreign medics may be dropped.

* * *

Reuters
June 7, 2005

Libyan police cleared of torturing Bulgarians
By Salah Sarrar

TRIPOLI - Nine Libyan policemen and a physician were cleared on Tuesday of torturing five Bulgarian nurses to force them to confess to deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV.

"The court has decided that all the defendants are not guilty and they were acquitted of the charges against them," the Tripoli court judge Abdullah Aoun said.

A Libyan court last year sentenced the Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death by firing squad for infecting 426 children in a hospital in the eastern town of Benghazi.

The medics, who have been in jail since 1999, say they were forced to confess.

Bulgarian officials had hoped for guilty verdicts against the policemen which could have helped the nurses in their appeal against their convictions.

The case has damaged Libya's ties with the European Union, which rejects the evidence against the nurses.

EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner, who visited the nurses last month and raised their case with Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in an attempt to secure their release, said the trial had been flawed.

"We have been extremely disappointed by the procedures in this trial," she said in a statement. "Lawyers from Avocats sans Frontieres were denied visas, and therefore were not able to be present in court or to assist their clients in line with the normal international standards of law."

The medics say Libya has made them scapegoats rather than admit the HIV infections were caused by poor hygiene.

The Supreme Court is set to rule on their appeal on Nov. 15.

The nurses' lawyer Othman Bizanti said they would also launch an appeal against Tuesday's verdicts.

"The verdict is disappointing of course but is not a final decision ... It certainly raises questions on how efficient Libya's court system is," Bulgarian Deputy Foreign Minister Gergana Grancharona said.

The 10 defendants and their supporters shouted with joy as they were acquitted, court witnesses said.

SUE THE STATE
Their lawyer said they were now planning to sue the state and the nurses.

"We have never doubted such a verdict because we are innocent," said senior police officer Jomaa Mechri.

The Libyan physician, who works for the police force, had been accused of helping the officers torture the nurses. None of the defendants was charged with torturing the Palestinian medic.

The EU -- which Bulgaria hopes to join in 2007 -- has called the medics' death sentences a major obstacle to Gaddafi's push to renew ties with the West.

But Gaddafi is also under intense pressure from the children's families, who demand punishment.

Libya says 50 infected children have died of AIDS so far.

Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov visited Libya last month to discuss the case with Gaddafi.

Libya has said the case could be settled if the victims received financial compensation. But Bulgaria has refused, saying that would amount to admitting guilt.

However, the Balkan state and its allies are seeking to offer Gaddafi a way out by providing medical equipment, expertise and some aid for the hospital and the children.

The EU and Libya want to improve relations following Tripoli's decision in 2003 to dismantle its nuclear programme and an agreement to pay compensation for two airliner bombings in the 1980s blamed on Libya.

* * *

Reuters
July 19, 2005

Myanmar spreads AIDS in Asia, study says
By Evelyn Leopold

UNITED NATIONS. Heroin users and prostitutes in Myanmar have spread HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, through large parts of Asia, according to a Council on Foreign Relations study released on Monday.

The use of so-called genetic fingerprinting now allows scientists to identify changes in the evolution of the virus and thereby dispute accusations, such as the one Libya made against Bulgarian nurses, that one group or another was spreading the virus.

"With the exception of one serious outbreak in China, virtually all the strains of HIV now circulating in Asia - from Manipur, India, all the way to Vietnam, from mid-China all the way down to Indonesia, come from a single country," Laurie Garrett, author of the 67-page report, told a news conference.

"Several research teams have proven that these various HIV strains can be tracked along four major routes, all originating in Burma," she said, referring to Myanmar's former name.

The highest infection rates are among prostitutes and heroin users in Myanmar, ranked as the world's top opium producer until 2003 when Afghanistan moved to first place.

"Burma is a failed state, rife with civil war and rival gangs of drug, gem and sex-slave smugglers," said the report, entitled "HIV and National Security: Where Are The Links?"

Garrett said the new technology, known as molecular epidemiology, could prevent accusations of who spread the epidemic. For example, a year ago, India charged that "promiscuous Pakistanis" spread HIV in Kashmir.

More serious is Libya's jailing in 1999 of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, accused of deliberately infecting 426 children with HIV. Bulgaria countered that Libya failed to screen its blood transfusion supplies.

"Were the Libyan government willing to comply, a study of the HIV strains found in the 426 infected children might offer proof of their origin," Garrett's report said.

Using genetic technics, researchers have also proved that the rapidly growing HIV epidemic in the former Soviet Union -- Russia, Ukraine and the Baltic states - appears to stem from one strain spread by drug users nearly a decade ago.

"Nearly all of the HIV viruses circulating in that region...closely match one another genetically, were introduced into the area in 1996-97 and are being spread through injection by drug users," Garrett wrote.

* * *

Associated Press
August 18, 2005

Libya urges Bulgaria to pay blood money to lift death sentences on medics in AIDS case
By KHALED EL-DEEB, Associated Press Writer

TRIPOLI, Libya (AP). Libya called on the Bulgarian government to negotiate the payment of blood money to win amnesty for six medics, including five Bulgarians and a Palestinian, sentenced to death for allegedly infecting 400 children with the virus that causes AIDS.

Libya has come under intense pressure from Europe and the United States to free the medics, amid accusations by human rights groups that the government concocted the charges against them to cover up unsafe practices in its hospitals and clinics.

The six medical workers rounded up in 1999 were sentenced to death in May 2004 on charges they infected the children with HIV-contaminated blood in an experiment to find a cure for AIDS. Libya said about 50 of the infected children have died. But in May, a court postponed a ruling in the defendants' appeal of their convictions until November, raising hopes that Libya might free them. Libya's ambassador to Britain, Mohammed al-Zaway, said the Bulgarian government should negotiate with the families of the victims to decide on a "diya," or blood money, which Islamic law allows to be paid to victims in murder cases to prevent a death sentence.

"Any solution other than negotiations is a waste of time," al-Zaway said after talks with U.S and British officials in Tripoli. "An agreement with the families of the children would reflect positively on the case according to Islamic law."

"The amount that the Bulgarian government agrees on with the family is not an issue for us. The important thing is the families' agreement," he told The Associated Press. "Libya will not accept pressure or blackmail. THe issue is clear and the parties (in the dispute) are known, and they can reach an understanding," he said. "But we will not accept arrogant language from the West," he added, referring to Western pressure to resolve the case.

Bulgaria has rejected previous Libyan calls for it to pay compensation to the victims' families. Libyan officials have suggested the death sentences could be reconsidered if the families of the victims were compensated and those still alive were treated.

The six defendants have complained of severe torture during interrogations, saying they were jolted with electricity, beaten with sticks and repeatedly jumped on while strapped to their beds. Two of the Bulgarian nurses said they were raped. All the nurses are women. In June, a Libyan court acquitted nine police officers and a doctor accused in the torture.

Libya, once an international pariah, has turned new pages with many Western countries since 2003, when Gadhafi accepted responsibility and agreed to pay compensation for the families killed in the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland. He has also renounced his aspirations to become a nuclear power.

Al-Zazeera TV
January 1, 2006

Excerpt from interview with Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi

Foreign Nurses Injected More than 400 Libyan Children with AIDS

"What happened was a tragedy. More than 400 children were infected with AIDS in hospital, and dozens of them died. How could such a thing happen? It's peculiar. We didn't think that a nurse, who is an angel of mercy, could inject the children in her care with AIDS. How can nurses, whom we call angels of mercy, do such a thing? But it did happen. They should tell us how it happened.

"It is noticeable that some countries are demanding the release of the Bulgarian nurses. These countries should be blamed. It means that these countries are behind this operation. There is a report that says this virus was manufactured. It was given to the nurses to experiment on Libyan children, in order to examine its effects. We asked the nurses: Who gave you this virus? The countries that defend these nurses should be blamed for being behind this plan. These countries' intelligence gave the virus to the nurses. If the report is true, it is serious. It is serious.
"In this day and age, a country allows its intelligence to conduct an experiment on the children of another nation, by means of medical delegation?! This is abominable, if it's true."

Interviewer: "By my brother, the leader, a Libyan court wanted to retry them..."

Mu'ammar Qaddafi: "There was an appeal. The nurses and the Palestinian doctor wrote: 'We confess.' They confessed. They said: 'A guy called John or something came to us, gave us a bottle and said: Inject the children with this.' He paid them and left.

"Which intelligence agency sent him - whether American, Arab, or Israeli - they said they did not know. That is what they said."

[...]

"We are facing a real tragedy. If the court sentences them to death, they will be executed."

The Economist
March 9, 2006

Libya: Change is in the air but happens slowly on the ground

There are darker stories, too, of rampant corruption and other abuses. A well-known case is that of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor sentenced to death on the monstrous charge of deliberately injecting hundreds of children with the HIV virus. They have now been reprieved, and appear likely to be freed under a complicated face-saving deal. Hundreds of Libyan dissidents have got less foreign attention, and remain in prison or exile.

The Wall Street Journal
September 10, 2006

TRIPOLI DISPATCH
The Nurses' Tale
"Tell Americans we want to be free."

BY JUDITH MILLER

Bad blood, literally and politically. Tortured nurses and a mercurial despot. More than 400 HIV-infected children and grieving parents. These are the ingredients of a crisis of Moammar Gadhafi's own making, one which, in turn, sparked a human-rights tragedy that may at last--after seven years of threats and recrimination--be close to resolution.
Before the Bush administration took Libya off the terrorist-state list and restored full diplomatic relations in June, U.S. officials insisted that Libya find a way to release five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who have been imprisoned since 1999 and sentenced to death for allegedly infecting 434 children in Benghazi with HIV, 52 of whom have already died of AIDS.
No topic--not even Col. Gadhafi's renunciation of WMD--is as politically charged within Libya as this epidemic and its appalling consequences. Many of those I have interviewed asked not to be quoted since the lives of the foreign medics remain at risk. And while diplomats said they have faith in a deal, quietly devised with Libyan officials, that would free the medics and ensure better medical care for the infected children, they fear it could still collapse.
The crisis, like the epidemic itself, began slowly. Dr. Achris Ahmed, who heads the Benghazi HIV Committee, which the government created only last year to address the crisis, told me that the first case of AIDS among the children at the Al Fateh Children's Hospital was diagnosed in June 1997, a year before the Bulgarian nurses even began working at the Libyan hospital. Several months later, doctors diagnosed a second AIDS case. "But we knew little about the virus because there is no HIV in Libya," Dr. Ahmed said, parroting the then-official line.
Dris Lagha's eight-year-old daughter, Rokaya Lagha, was the seventh case to be diagnosed in September 1998. "The doctor was confused," he said, recalling the day he learned the devastating news. "He didn't seem to know much about the virus, and we didn't know what to do." Some parents were told they could do nothing. "My doctor said: 'This is from God,'" said Omar Mismari, whose infected son, Saef al-Islam, is now 10.
In December 1998, after a cluster of such cases was found among the hospital's former patients, Messrs. Lagha and Mismari formed the Family Association of HIV/AIDS Children of Benghazi, a group that now has similar political clout in Libya to that of the Pan Am 103 victims' families in the U.S. "We were terrified," said Mr. Lagha. "Because AIDS is a sexually transmitted disease, many of our kids were mocked and ostracized. Many stopped going to school." Some were treated like animals by their own parents. "We isolated our kids, thinking they might infect their sisters and brothers or us. Some were locked away and thrown food like dogs. We were afraid to touch or hold them," said Mr. Mismari.
After a Libyan magazine published an article about the outbreak, attributing it to poor hygiene in the hospital, people in this city of 800,000--a traditional bastion of resistance to Col. Gadhafi--were outraged. Libyans demanded to know how, where and why the infection started and spread. On Feb. 9, 1999, police raided the homes of dozens of hospital medical workers and threw them in jail. After several months, five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were charged with having deliberately infected 426 children with HIV-tainted blood. In May 2004, a Benghazi court sentenced them to death by firing squad for "undermining the security of the state." Nine Libyans who also worked at the hospital were acquitted.
Bulgaria, which had supplied Libya and even Col. Gadhafi himself with doctors and nurses needed to keep hospitals running, was in turn outraged, as was much of Europe. But the foreign "plot" to infect Libyan children played well at home, deflecting responsibility from a hospital that could barely maintain treatment records, and from the government, which had shortchanged medical services for years.
The conspiracy theory soon had a powerful champion: the "brother-leader" himself. Col. Gadhafi declared that the CIA or Mossad had designed a unique strain of killer virus and given it to the medics to experiment on Libya's children. Belief in the foreigners' guilt was not shaken by evidence that the confessions had been extracted by torture. When it became clear that foreign protests would not subside, Col. Gadhafi proposed that the medics be released in exchange for the Libyan who has been serving a life sentence for the bombing of Pan Am 103, plus the payment of $5.7 billion in compensation to care for the children and their families.
Unwilling to acknowledge culpability and furious at Libya's effort to draw moral equivalence between the Pam Am victims of Libyan terrorism and the sick children, Bulgaria refused. Its stance won strong support from the European Union, whose ranks it is scheduled to join, and from President Bush. But the Libyans dug in further, as I saw on a visit to Benghazi in March. Five obviously sick children were being treated when I arrived at the Center for Infectious Diseases and Immunology. Ali Barinasse, whose 18-year-old daughter had developed skin lesions, told me he only trusted foreign doctors. He had come to the center to ensure his daughter would be treated in Italy, but he had not brought her with him. In fact, she didn't know she had the virus. He'd never told her. "She's going to college next year, and I want her to study."
The families I met agreed on almost nothing except their desire to continue going to Europe where the Libyan government pays for their children's treatment, along with a generous stipend for the families' living expenses. "Don't let them tell you this is not about the money," said one doctor in Benghazi. "For some families, it is mainly about the money." For others, foreign treatment is a means of escaping the stigmatizing disease in Libya.
The mood was also grimly combative at the Al Fateh hospital, the 320-bed facility where the infections are believed to have begun--though to this day no one knows for certain how the virus was contracted and spread. With some 12,000 admissions a year, the hospital does not look like a facility in an oil-rich land. Dr. Abdelsalam al-Shakmak, director of medical services, angrily denied the conclusions of a report by Luc Montagnier, co-discoverer of HIV, who testified in Libyan court and wrote a letter to Col. Gadhafi saying that the children were probably infected because of poor hospital hygiene and poor staff. "Our own experts concluded the opposite," Dr. Shakmak said defensively.
A Libyan physician who refused to be identified confirmed that the HIV strain that had infected the children, while rare, was definitely African. Contrary to the mythology of Libya as an AIDS-free zone, there is HIV in Libya, he said. Libyans were at risk because few wanted to acknowledge that, he added. Unless Libya faced facts now, worse outbreaks would explode. Normally, the doctor said, family associations were useful. But because so many of the families were angry, politicized, greedy and powerful, given their children's status as "martyrs" to the foreign viral invasion, they had made matters worse. Col. Gadhafi, ever the cynical balancer of political forces, did not wish to challenge them. His reluctance was reinforced earlier this year when government-sponsored protests in Benghazi over Danish cartoons of Prophet Mohammed turned against the government, sparking riots in which the Italian embassy and Libyan government buildings were burned.
Diplomats said a turning point in the crisis came last March when Col. Gadhafi raised the issue at an Arab summit in Algiers. Questioned again about whether he would release the medics, he refused, asking why no one seemed concerned about Libyan children dying of AIDS. European diplomats sensed an opening: If the West were to provide humanitarian relief to the children, perhaps the medics could be freed. EU diplomats devised a five-point "action plan" to help Libya deal with a health and political crisis that had overwhelmed it. Joined by the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, the EU agreed to provide 25 medical experts, plus $1.7 million in drugs and equipment, to the Benghazi center. Libyan and European diplomats also agreed to create a "fund" to assist the children, though the Europeans carefully avoided any suggestion that the money was compensation for a crime.
But tensions in Libya were still high. Last November, when a judge postponed reconsidering the case for a month, relatives of the children rioted, demanding the nurses be put to death. "I want the Bulgarian nurses injected with the virus they gave my children," said Hosni Chibli, 32, whose daughter Zenab was three months old when she was diagnosed in 1998. The diagnosis of "medical terrorism," or "bio-terrorism," as Col. Gadhafi called it, has clearly been emotionally satisfying for the families, Libyan medics and officials who might otherwise be blamed for hospital conditions. But denial has meant that 10% of the infected children have died, far higher than the rate in Europe, where proper treatment is the norm.
One person who understands the dimensions of this tragedy, for Libyans and foreign medics alike, is Col. Gadhafi's son, Saif al-Islam, whose own foundation has been mediating among the warring parties. The foundation hired Dr. Montagnier, who dismissed the thesis that the infections were bio-terrorism. A foundation executive said it also paid Dr. Montagnier $100,000 for the report it translated into Arabic so that it could be submitted to the court. And the foundation successfully lobbied to have the nurses and the Palestinian doctor moved to a cleaner prison in Tripoli with access to diplomats, attorneys, their families and the occasional journalist like me. Saif al-Islam has challenged his father's argument that the outbreak was a foreign plot. "There is no conspiracy," he told me. "There is no hand of Mossad or the CIA. This was a question of mismanagement, or negligence, or bad luck, or maybe all three." Conspiracy theories, rooted in Libyan and Arab culture, had created a terrible dynamic in this case, he said. "We must find a solution to this tragedy."

* * *

Permission to visit the nurses in jail arrived, predictably, on my last morning in Libya. Human rights activists had told me that Jdeida prison in Tripoli was far superior to the miserable places in which the nurses had been kept for seven years. Before seeing them, I was given a tour of a new high-tech medical center where inmates will receive care. Three of the five Bulgarians were in the villa that was built for them when a prison "translator" and I walked through the metal doors that sealed the area off from the rest of the prison. Their living room and small kitchen looked out on a tiny courtyard where they had planted a tree and herbs. Their tiny living-room shelves were filled with crackers, coffee and other donations from the Bulgarian ambassador's weekly visits. The adjacent twin bedrooms were clean, and contained real beds (which some American jails have stopped providing prisoners). They share a bathroom.
Valentina Siropulo's tears began flowing almost as soon as we sat down. Yes, they had enough to eat and read. And yes, they could watch TV and listen to music. "The hard part is psychological," she said, exhausted by the strain of seven years of hoping for freedom and fearing execution. The loneliness was oppressive, despite the privilege of one phone call a week. "I have a son. He's a student in Bulgaria," said the 46-year-old nurse. "I have seen him once in seven years." They had counted the days, the hours spent in prison. Valya Chervenyashka, 51, who has two daughters, was finishing an intricate needle-point of the Last Supper when I arrived. She measures time in stitches and hoped she wouldn't have time to finish it.
Tugging at her worn Navy blue tracksuit, Nasia Nenova, 39, stared at me silently, reluctant to speak what she called her poor English. But the translator who the prison had insisted accompany me, spoke no Bulgarian. "We are innocent," insisted Ms. Siropulo. "We did nothing wrong. Tell Americans we want to be free."
Their first year in prison had been the worst, they agreed. They had only "confessed" because they'd been tortured almost every day. The guards had put electrical wires on their fingers, wrists, chests, toes, necks, ears and tongues, they told me, pointing to the places where the current had shot through them. They named the men, one by one, who had abused them. Only the day before I'd shaken hands with one of them--Juma Al Mishri--an attractive man with close-cropped graying hair and warm smile who denied having mistreated the women. He'd introduced me to his daughter, a shy student at Al-Fateh university. "We're human," he said. "How could we torture nurses?" He and seven other cops, a doctor and a translator had been tried in court in June 2005 on the torture charges, rare in Libya. All were acquitted.
"Juma was the worst," Ms. Siropulo insisted.
What the women said was consistent with what they had told Human Rights Watch in May 2005, and what diplomats and lawyers who had seen the women and heard their stories. Kristiana Valceva, who spoke the best English and was at the dentist during my visit, told Human Rights Watch that she had also been beaten with an electric stick on her breasts and genitals. Ashraf Ahmad Jum'a, the Palestinian doctor, whom I was not permitted to see, said interrogators had forced the medics to shock one another. Now there were no more drugs or dogs or sleep prevention, they said. There was just the terror of waiting to learn if they would live or die.
Their fate now hangs on the Libyan court that is reconsidering the case this week, and on continued implementation of the European deal to help the children. The amount of "assistance" to each child's family has been tentatively set at $250,000 rather than the more than $10 million per family originally demanded.
Libyans have discussed ways in which the medics could be freed, diplomats say. The court could set aside the earlier verdict as "flawed." Or the original conviction could be upheld, but with sentences imposed shorter than the time the medics have already served. Or the verdicts could be upheld with clemency granted by the minister of justice or the leader himself. With some luck and belated good will, this tragedy may finally end. But the episode shows that although Washington has taken Libya off the terrorist list and restored diplomatic relations to reward Col. Gadhafi for renouncing terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, Libya may well remain problematic.

Ms. Miller, a former New York Times reporter, is a writer in Manhattan.

* * *

Nature
September 20, 2006

Editorial
Libya's travesty

Six medical workers in Libya face execution. It is not too late for scientists to speak up on their behalf.

Imagine that five American nurses and a British doctor have been detained and tortured in a Libyan prison since 1999, and that a Libyan prosecutor called at the end of August for their execution by firing squad on trumped-up charges of deliberately contaminating more than 400 children with HIV in 1998. Meanwhile, the international community and its leaders sit by, spectators of a farce of a trial, leaving a handful of dedicated volunteer humanitarian lawyers and scientists to try to secure their release.
Implausible? That scenario, with the medics enduring prison conditions reminiscent of the film Midnight Express, is currently playing out in a Tripoli court, except that the nationalities of the medics are different. The nurses are from Bulgaria and the doctor is Palestinian (see page 254).
Despite the medics' plight, the United States agreed in May to re-establish diplomatic relations with Libya, 18 years after the bombing of an airliner over Lockerbie in Scotland that killed 270 civilians. Many observers had expected a resolution of the medics' case to be part of the deal. And the European Union has given Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, red-carpet treatment at the European Commission in Brussels.
International diplomacy, dealing as it does with geopolitical and economic realpolitik, by necessity often involves turning a blind eye. But its lack of progress in response to the medics' case in Libya is an affront to the basic democratic principles that the United States and the European Union espouse. Diplomacy has lamentably failed to deliver.
The principles of law and science have the common aim of discovering the truth. A previous assessment of the case by two prominent AIDS researchers, Luc Montagnier and Vittorio Colizzi, concluded that the charges are false, that the medics are innocent, and that the infections resulted from poor hygiene in Libya's hospitals. It was not a plot orchestrated by the CIA and Israel's Mossad, as President Gaddafi alleged in 2001 × an allegation that has driven a popular thirst for vengeance in Libya.
The case is politically embarrassing for Gaddafi. Finding a scapegoat is easier than having to admit that the infection of the children was an accidental tragedy. But the most likely diplomatic compromise × that the medics will be condemned to death, with this being commuted to a life sentence × is unacceptable. They are innocent, and the law and science can prove it, if they get the belated opportunity.
That is why scientists should lend their full support to the call by Lawyers without Borders × a volunteer organization that last year helped win the freedom of Amina Lawal, who had been sentenced to death in Nigeria for having a child outside marriage × that Libya's courts should order a fully independent, international scientific assessment of how the children were contaminated.
In 2004, an Editorial in this journal stated, with respect to the medics' case, that "Gaddafi has a chance to show the world that he now understands that true leadership means embracing justice, compassion and a respect for scientific evidence" (Natureà430, 277; 200410.1038/430277a). Two years on, we are still waiting, and Lawyers without Borders is right to hold President Gaddafi and the international community to account.
The scientific community has also been relatively silent on the case, perhaps in the hope that it would be sorted out by diplomacy. But the latter has not proved to be the case, and scientific leaders need to use all their influence urgently, as the fate of the medics will be sealed in the coming weeks. It is time not only to save the doctor and nurses, but also to defend a common vision of science and law in establishing the truth, above all other imperatives. Meanwhile, Gaddafi has the opportunity to put this affair behind him by giving the six an immediate pardon.

* * *

Nature
September 21, 2006

Editorial
Libya's travesty
Six medical workers in Libya face execution. It is not too late for scientists to speak up on their behalf.

Imagine that five American nurses and a British doctor have been detained and tortured in a Libyan prison since 1999, and that a Libyan prosecutor called at the end of August for their execution by firing squad on trumped-up charges of deliberately contaminating more than 400 children with HIV in 1998. Meanwhile, the international community and its leaders sit by, spectators of a farce of a trial, leaving a handful of dedicated volunteer humanitarian lawyers and scientists to try to secure their release.

Implausible? That scenario, with the medics enduring prison conditions reminiscent of the film Midnight Express, is currently playing out in a Tripoli court, except that the nationalities of the medics are different. The nurses are from Bulgaria and the doctor is Palestinian.

Despite the medics' plight, the United States agreed in May to re-establish diplomatic relations with Libya, 18 years after the bombing of an airliner over Lockerbie in Scotland that killed 270 civilians. Many observers had expected a resolution of the medics' case to be part of the deal. And the European Union has given Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, red-carpet treatment at the European Commission in Brussels.

International diplomacy, dealing as it does with geopolitical and economic realpolitik, by necessity often involves turning a blind eye. But its lack of progress in response to the medics' case in Libya is an affront to the basic democratic principles that the United States and the European Union espouse. Diplomacy has lamentably failed to deliver.

The principles of law and science have the common aim of discovering the truth. A previous assessment of the case by two prominent AIDS researchers, Luc Montagnier and Vittorio Colizzi, concluded that the charges are false, that the medics are innocent, and that the infections resulted from poor hygiene in Libya's hospitals. It was not a plot orchestrated by the CIA and Israel's Mossad, as President Gaddafi alleged in 2001 × an allegation that has driven a popular thirst for vengeance in Libya.

The case is politically embarrassing for Gaddafi. Finding a scapegoat is easier than having to admit that the infection of the children was an accidental tragedy. But the most likely diplomatic compromise × that the medics will be condemned to death, with this being commuted to a life sentence × is unacceptable. They are innocent, and the law and science can prove it, if they get the belated opportunity.

That is why scientists should lend their full support to the call by Lawyers without Borders × a volunteer organization that last year helped win the freedom of Amina Lawal, who had been sentenced to death in Nigeria for having a child outside marriage × that Libya's courts should order a fully independent, international scientific assessment of how the children were contaminated.

In 2004, an Editorial in this journal stated, with respect to the medics' case, that "Gaddafi has a chance to show the world that he now understands that true leadership means embracing justice, compassion and a respect for scientific evidence" (Nature 430, 277; 200410.1038/430277a). Two years on, we are still waiting, and Lawyers without Borders is right to hold President Gaddafi and the international community to account.

The scientific community has also been relatively silent on the case, perhaps in the hope that it would be sorted out by diplomacy. But the latter has not proved to be the case, and scientific leaders need to use all their influence urgently, as the fate of the medics will be sealed in the coming weeks. It is time not only to save the doctor and nurses, but also to defend a common vision of science and law in establishing the truth, above all other imperatives. Meanwhile, Gaddafi has the opportunity to put this affair behind him by giving the six an immediate pardon.

* * *

Nature
October 2, 2006

Dirty needles, dirty dealings
Documentary draws attention to the role of hygiene in HIV transmission in Libya.

Charlotte Schubert

There are two accounts of how hundreds of children in a Libyan hospital mysteriously contracted HIV in the late 1990s. One says unhygienic medical practices fuelled the outbreak. The other argues that medical workers murdered the children × possibly in a plot sponsored by the CIA and Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service.
Mickey Grant explores both accounts in his documentary Injection, which he released last week for free viewing on the Internet. By releasing the film now he hopes to bring attention to the plight of the five Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor who face the death penalty in Libyan courts on charges of intentionally infecting children. A verdict is expected soon after the court adjourns on 31 October.
The free Internet release was necessary because, Grant says, he could find no buyers for Injection upon its completion this year. This despite the fact the film-maker has several widely seen documentaries under his belt, including China Run, a film about the long-distance runner Stan Cottrell that aired on HBO and in dozens of cinemas. "I couldn't figure out what it was," says Grant. "Generally they said it looked negative, like it was going to be an unpleasant story."

Close-ups

In one moving segment, Grant uses archive Bulgarian news footage in which one of the accused nurses describes being jailed without knowing the charges, confessing to murder under torture and then retracting her confession.
Equally compelling are Grant's stories of the use of dirty needles in Africa. One man tells how his family received injections of malaria medicine from a single needle, transmitting HIV from one member to another. Grant also interviews the owner of a clinic in a slum in Nairobi, Kenya, who sells non-sterile, loose, used needles; the film traces the source to a city dump, where children scavenge for needles from trucks arriving from the city hospital.
From such anecdotal evidence it seems clear that unhygienic medical practices are rife in Africa. Grant also relays rumours that Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, had cut off the delivery of medical supplies to this hospital in response to a failed assassination attempt in the region.
The notion that poor hygiene was a problem at the Libyan hospital concurs with a major scientific report by Luc Montagnier at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France, and Vittorio Colizzi, an AIDS researcher at the University of Tor Vergata in Rome, Italy.

Number game

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that dirty needles account for 2.5% of transmissions in sub-Saharan Africa, and many independent experts concur. But Grant claims that this is a vast underestimate, made in part out of fear of scaring Africans away from medical care. Some studies point to figures as high as 40%, Grant says in the film. But it is hard to assess the argument, with little evidence for the WHO figures presented in the documentary.
Colizzi told news@nature.com that he agrees the WHO underplays the problem of dirty needles in Africa. "If more attention were paid to this issue, the tenor of the trial in Libya might be different," he says.
While Colizzi's study suggested that unhygienic medical practices were involved with the Libyan HIV outbreak, he says is not clear to what extent dirty needles, unsafe invasive procedures or other unhygienic procedures were responsible. He says he would have liked to see this explored more thoroughly in the film.
Grant says he would have liked that too, but politics kept him from delving too deeply into this particular case. Grant's bleak footage of himself alone in Libyan hotel rooms, while officials are apparently stymying his attempts to film in the country, tells a vivid story.
"Gaddafi is a dangerous man," says Grant, who says he was followed by government officials during his time there. "Everything in Libya revolves around him."

* * *

Nature
October 11, 2006

Protests mount against Libyan trial
Support grows for accused medics.
Declan Butler

Scientific and human-rights organizations have rallied to the cause of six medical workers imprisoned in Libya, accused of deliberately infecting hundreds of children with HIV. The workers look likely to be found guilty and could face the death penalty, yet independent scientists who have reviewed the evidence are convinced they are innocent.
Emmanuel Altit, a lawyer with Avocats sans Frontieres based in Toulouse, France, which is handling the defence of the health workers, welcomes the renewed pressure as "formidable, exactly the sort of thing that's needed now" But he adds that pressure needs to be increased and sustained throughout the rest of the trial.
The five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor, who have been in prison since 1999, were sentenced to death in 2004. The verdict was overturned in 2005 by the Libyan Supreme Court, which ordered a retrial that began in May this year. A verdict is expected next month, and the defence team isn't hopeful.
Although many human-rights groups have supported the six in the past, the Supreme Court ruling led to a false sense of security and international pressure to free the medics dropped, says Zafra Lerman, chair of the subcommittee on scientific freedom and human rights of the American Chemical Society (ACS). The call by a Libyan prosecutor at the end of August for the death penalty came as a shock. "We relaxed too much; we thought the retrial would just see them being released. We didn't see this new danger coming," says Lerman, who has won awards for her work in helping to free Soviet dissidents and Chinese scientists jailed after the 1989 Tianan-men Square protests.
So last week, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the ACS, Physicians for Human Rights, and Amnesty International issued new human-rights action alerts for the medical workers. In particular, they reiterated last month's call by the defence lawyers for the court to hear independent scientific evidence (see Nature 443, 245Ö246; 2006).
But despite a Palestinian being one of the accused, science bodies in the Arab world have been relatively silent on the case. "The case is not on the radar at all," says Moneef Al-Zou'bi, director-general of the Islamic Academy of Sciences, based in Amman, Jordan. "It has not attracted as much attention in this part of the world compared to elsewhere."
The academy, created by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which represents 57 Islamic countries, has not taken a position on the case. "People here have so many political and economic problems, including the conflicts in Iraq and Palestine, that the case has just not become a priority," says Al-Zou'bi. Such difficulties mean that the academy's human-rights focus is much more on promoting basic socio-economic rights, he adds, such as access to clean water.
Not everyone agrees with that position. "This is a difficult call," says one official at an international human-rights body, who asked not to be named. "Of course it is totally legitimate to prioritize the most basic rights for the largest number of people. But there is definitely a pattern of organizations in this region virtually ignoring violations of civil and political rights in their own neighbourhoods. I would think that at the very least, scientific or medical organizations would come out in support of colleagues sentenced to death in such a blatant case of scape-goating and dismissal of science. And in the end, when this can happen to health workers, the right to health also comes under threat."
The QIC's Commission on Scientific and Technological Cooperation (COMSTECH) hasn't taken a position either. Chairman Atta-ur-Rahman, who is also Pakistan's higher education minister, says that human-rights issues are beyond the commission's remit. "COM-STECH's charter is confined purely to matters concerning scientific and technological cooperation between member states", and so does not extend to legal and judicial matters, he explains.
Imad Khatib, secretary-general of the Palestine Academy for Science and Technology in East Jerusalem, says his academy "cares deeply about the plight of the nurses and the doctor and that they have a fair trial", although he says that most of its human-rights efforts are spent on the abuse of scientists' rights within Palestine.

* * *

The New York Times
October 14, 2006

Editorial
A Medical-Legal Travesty in Libya

Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor are facing the death penalty in Libya based on preposterous charges that they deliberately infected hundreds of children with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. This looming miscarriage of justice demands a strong warning to the Libyan leader, Muammar el-Qaddafi, that his efforts to join the ranks of peaceable nations will suffer if the medical workers are made the scapegoats for the failure of LibyaÒs own health system.
The doctor and nurses, who had been working at a hospital in Benghazi, were arrested in 1999. They confessed under torture, according to human rights organizations, but later protested their innocence. The charges that they deliberately infected more than 400 children were clearly bogus.
One of the worldÒs greatest experts on H.I.V., Dr. Luc Montagnier, testified that the real cause of the infections was poor hygienic practices at the hospital. The infections emerged before the accused started working at the hospital and continued to spread after they were thrown in jail.
It seems clear that the government wanted to deflect public outrage by accusing foreigners of committing a horrific crime × rather than acknowledging the negligence of LibyaÒs health system.
The six medical workers were convicted and sentenced to death in 2004, while nine Libyans who worked at the same hospital were acquitted. The convictions were overturned by the Libyan Supreme Court, which ordered a retrial. Defense attorneys fear the same outcome this time. The attorneys are calling for another independent scientific assessment of the case because the evidence offered by Dr. Montagnier and an Italian scientist was tossed out by the courts.
Thus far the United States and European nations have focused on setting up an international fund to care for victims of the tragedy and to upgrade equipment at the hospital × in hopes that will be enough to get the medical workers set free. Libya is demanding substantial compensation as well, analogous to what it paid to families of the victims of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.
That seems a grotesque overreach given that the nurses and doctors are the victims here. The White House holds Libya up as a model for other nations to follow in renouncing weapons of mass destruction. Libya must also be judged by how it respects human rights and the rule of law.

* * *

The Times
October 13, 2006

Letters to the Editor
Foreign workers at risk in Libya

Sir, We are deeply concerned over the fate of six medical workers who have been in a Libyan prison since 1998 on charges of deliberately infecting more than 400 children with HIV, more than 40 of whom have died of Aids.
The charge is against five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who worked in the al-Fateh Hospital in Benghazi. President Gaddafi alleged in 2001 that the HIV infection of the Libyan children was a plot by the CIA and Mossad. In May 2004 the six workers were sentenced to death, but a supreme court questioned the conviction after international protests.

The Libyan authorities invited Professor Luc Montagnier, the co-discoverer of HIV at the Pasteur Institute, in Paris, and Professor Vittorio Colizzi, an Aids and infectious diseases authority at Rome University, to report on the outbreak of HIV infection. They concluded that many of the children contracted HIV before the accused staff arrived and that many of the children were also infected with hepatitis B and C, which pointed to poor medical practice and hygiene at the hospital. The report stated that all the evidence indicated that the six accused were innocent of the alleged crime.

However, the court dismissed this report in favour of an investigation by Libyan doctors whose impartiality and scientific credentials must be in doubt. A retrial was ordered and the verdict is expected next month. The fear is that all six will be condemned to death.

We ask the medical and scientific authorities of the United Nations, Arab countries, United States and European Union (Bulgaria will join the EU in three months) to exert their utmost influence on President Gaddafi to prevent what might amount to judicial murder.

PROFESSOR LORD REES
President, Royal Society

PROFESSOR SIR KEITH PETERS
President, Academy of Medical Sciences

PROFESSOR IAN GILMORE
President, Royal College of Physicians

PROFESSOR THOMAS LEHNER
Kings College, London

* * *

The Times
October 23, 2006

Science rallies to save the Tripoli Six from Gaddafi's firing squads
Anjana Ahuja

NEXT WEEK five nurses and a doctor will go on trial in Libya accused of deliberately infecting children with the HIV virus, as part of a Western conspiracy to bring suffering and death to what Colonel Gaddafi once proclaimed an HIV-free country. If found guilty at this third trial × they have already been imprisoned for seven years × they face the firing squad.
Luc Montagnier, the French virologist credited with discovering the HIV virus in 1983, has travelled to Libya to provide evidence that could help to exonerate them. But, in an astonishing setback, his submission is unlikely to be admitted as evidence.
Since diplomacy has failed, argues the journal Nature, it is time for scientists to come out in force. In a thundering editorial last month the journal said that Óscientific leaders need to use all their influence urgently . . . It is time not only to save the doctor and nurses, but also to defend a common vision of science and law in establishing the truth, above all other imperatives.Ô Much of that rallying is now being done in the blogosphere (thank you to Declan Butler, NatureÒs Paris correspondent, whose blog has provided invaluable updates). The medicsÒ plight has also prompted a letter to The Times from Lord Rees of Ludlow, President of the Royal Society, who cautions that the continuing silence may lead to Ójudicial murderÔ.
The details of the case of the Tripoli Six (or the Benghazi Six) are disturbing. The Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian doctor began work in 1998 at a hospital in Benghazi, in the north-east of the country. At the end of that year a cluster of children at the hospital were found to be carrying HIV. A Libyan magazine claimed that poor hygiene at the hospital was to blame.
In the resulting political furore, the homes of hospital workers were raided. The Tripoli Six, along with nine Libyan colleagues, were arrested. The Libyans were acquitted; the foreigners were charged with deliberately infecting 434 children with tainted blood. It emerged that confessions were extracted under torture. No matter × in GaddafiÒs eyes, the defendants were agents of the CIA or Mossad and guilty of unleashing a killer experimental virus on Libyan innocents.
Avocats Sans Frontieres (Lawyers Without Borders) took up the case; Montagnier was called in to examine samples of the virus. He concluded that the children must have been infected before the health workers arrived in Benghazi. Some children, Montagnier found, also had hepatitis B and C, strengthening the likelihood that shoddy hygiene practices were responsible. The evidence was backed up by Vittorio Colizzi, an Italian authority on HIV, but was thrown out by Libyan doctors. In an odd twist, one of GaddafiÒs sons has announced his belief that the six are innocent. Meanwhile, 52 children have died.
Gaddafi offered to free the medics in return for a Lockerbie bomber plus almost $6 billion compensation (which would mirror the amount paid by Libya to families bereaved in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103). The offer has been declined by Bulgaria, supported by the European Union and America.
What matters, of course, is the science; Libya will not allow it into the courtroom. Without it, a murderous miscarriage of justice remains a dreadful possibility.

* * *

Science Magazine
October 24, 2006

Pressure Mounts on Libya to Free Medical Workers
By John Bohannon

U.S. scientists are adding their voices to mounting international pressure on Libya to release six foreign medical workers who could face execution within weeks. A letter published online today by Science--written by virologist Robert Gallo, director of the Institute of Human Virology in Baltimore, Maryland, and co-discoverer of HIV, and signed by 43 other scientists--accuses the Libyan government of using the medics as scapegoats for the accidental infection with HIV of more than 400 children at a hospital in Benghazi.
Libyan police rounded up the five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor in 1999 and used torture to extract confessions that they had deliberately infected the children as an act of bioterrorism, according to human rights organizations. European scientists say poor hygiene likely caused the outbreak before the medics started working in the country (Science, 8 April 2005, p. 184).
The scientific evidence supported the medics' innocence, says Vittorio Colizzi, a virologist at the University of Rome "Tor Vergata" and an expert witness in the case. But it was disregarded by a Benghazi judge in 2004 in favor of damning testimony by Libyan doctors that was "full of errors and misunderstandings of basic molecular biology." The judge sentenced the medics to death by firing squad. The medics' final appeal is now being heard by the Libyan supreme court in Tripoli. Even more scientific evidence has accumulated since then, says Colizzi, but the supreme court denied the defense an opportunity to present it. The final session is scheduled for 31 October; a verdict is expected soon after.
"We want to get people angry and influence their governments to do something," says Gallo. Libya's actions "send a chilling message" to international health workers that could discourage them from working in the developing world, says Gallo, adding that the Libyans themselves Óneed all the scientific help they can get to prevent another outbreak." For its part, the Libyan government has said that the case could be settled if Western governments pay "blood money" to satisfy the families of the infected children; a sum of $5.7 billion has been suggested.
Outrage among scientists has been building in recent weeks in parallel with diplomatic pressure from the U.S. and European governments. The U.K.'s Royal Society, the New York Academy of Sciences, and the Federation of the European Academies of Medicine, among others, have published open letters to the Libyan government calling for the medics' release. The Web site of AAAS (publisher of Science) contains directions for how individual scientists can add to the pressure.
If the medics are not given a reprieve, says Gallo, "I will do everything I possibly can, starting with a call for an emergency session of the [U.S.] Academies of Science" to consider a "full scientific embargo." And if Libya decides to free the medics, Gallo says international praise and support should be equally swift: "They need to know that this virus is a problem for all of us, and we scientists can help."

The letter:

"In 2000-2001, reports began to surface of an HIV-1 outbreak in approximately 400 children who were hospitalized or treated as outpatients in the Al-Fateh Hospital, Benghazi, Libya. The Libyan government accused six medical workers (five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor) of intentionally infecting these children with HIV-1. The Libyan Head of State, Moammar Kadafi, speaking at the HIV/AIDS summit in Abuja, Nigeria in April 2001, stated that these children had been deliberately infected as part of a vast international conspiracy to destabilize his country. The six healthcare workers were imprisoned, tortured with electric shocks to extract Óconfessions,Ô tried in a Libyan court, convicted, and sentenced to death by firing squad. The resulting publicity caused the Benghazi pediatric HIV-1 outbreak to become the focus of international scientific efforts to understand how it occurred.

The Benghazi ChildrenÒs Hospital was visited by international experts, and the records of infected children were compiled. Many of these children were treated in
European hospitals, making it possible to obtain clinical specimens for virology studies. The examination of hospital records showed that without question, HIV-infected children were admitted to several wards of the Al Fateh Benghazi
ChildrenÒs Hospital in 1997 and early 1998 (with some possibility that HIV-infected children were present in the hospital as early as 1994), before the arrival in Libya of the six accused. The results of serology studies (1) and viral genome sequencing (1, 2) established that the HIV-1 infections in all the children arose from a single source with very low interstrain variation and the virus was of the CRF02 A/G subtype that is common in sub-Saharan Africa. A high percentage of the HIV-1Öinfected children were also infected with Hepatitis C virus, of several different genotypes, and many also had Hepatitis B virus infection despite an active pediatric immunization program (1). All three viruses were present in the children at rates far above those in the local population. Documentation of HIV-infected children admitted to the hospital in 1997 and the prevalence of multiple bloodborne viruses within the children, proves that HIV was present in the Al-Fateh Hospital by 1997, and the most reasonable explanation is that poor infection control practices, including the lack of sterile, disposable injecting equipment, led to the spread of HIV-1, Hepatitis B, and Hepatitis C. A change in medical practices at the hospital, including the introduction of disposable injection materials, stopped the further spread of HIV-1 infection (1).

Convicting a small group of individuals of such an appalling crime as the deliberate infection of 400 innocent children requires a very high degree of proof. Yet the Libyan court chose to exclude expert testimony from independent scientists and to prevent access to crucial pieces of evidence to test for HIV contamination, while relying instead on ÓconfessionsÔ extracted under torture and making threats of
execution for any noncooperation by the accused. At the same time, the Libyan government made demands for everincreasing financial compensation from Bulgaria for the parents of the infected children. These six innocent healthcare workers have been incarcerated in a Libyan prison for nearly 8 years, for what we believe was performing their jobs with inadequate equipment, after receiving inadequate training and having been exposed to the same risk of HIV infection as the Libyan children and hospital staff. What has happened to the accused sends a chilling message to all heathcare workers who choose to work in difficult circumstances to deliver lifesaving
care to HIV-1Öinfected or at-risk people worldwide.

Libya is now seeking closer ties with the Western world. We therefore request that our governments reach out to the Libyan people and their political leadership to find a way to release the imprisoned health care workers, provide means to look after the HIV-1Öinfected children, and help with all efforts to detect, treat, and prevent HIV-1 infection within Libya. If Libya is truly willing to enter into meaningful dialogs with Western nations, it should take the opportunity to benefit from the knowledge Western scientists have gained about HIV-1 and AIDS over the past 25 years and not instead create yet more victims of the AIDS epidemic×in this case, the five Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian doctor."

* * *

Nature
October 25, 2006

Special report
'A shocking lack of evidence'

The trial in Libya of six medics accused of infecting children with HIV ends next week. With the defendants facing possible execution, Declan Butler asked AIDS experts to assess the case against them.

A scientific report being used in the case against six foreign medical workers facing the death penalty in Libya is nothing but conjecture and supposition, say international experts. The evidence, commissioned from Libyan medics, has bolstered the charge that the six knowingly infected more than 400 children with HIV at the Al-Fateh Hospital in Benghazi in 1998.
The court has denied requests by defence lawyers to hear evidence from international experts. Instead, five Libyan physicians testified in August that they stand by the conclusions of their 2003 report, commissioned by the court in an earlier trial, and on 29 August the prosecution called for the medics to be given the death penalty. The trial is due to end on 31 October.
With a guilty verdict looking likely, Nature obtained an English translation of the Libyan report, which has been key to the prosecution's case, and asked leading international experts to assess it.
"I don't see any evidence in it," says Janine Jagger, an epidemiologist and MacArthur fellow who heads the International Health Care Worker Safety Center at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. "It wouldn't meet the lowest standards of epidemiological evidence for establishing any causal relationship."
In 2003, the court also ordered a report from Luc Montagnier, who discovered the AIDS virus and is president of the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention, and Vittorio Colizzi, an AIDS researcher at Rome's Tor Vergata University. They concluded that the infections were caused by poor hospital hygiene, and started before the medics arrived in Libya. But the court threw out this report, on the grounds that the Libyan panel had reached the opposite conclusion. The panel had dismissed the external report as "hypothetical" and "lacking precision".

'That's tosh'

"The [Libyan] report refutes the Montagnier and Colizzi report on the grounds that there is no written record of the reuse of injecting equipment, and a blank denial that indwelling catheters were ever used," says Robin Weiss, an AIDS virologist at University College London. "It wrongly turns lack of evidence into evidence of absence."
The report argues that HIV and hospital hygiene were not a problem in Libya (the prosecution describes the Al-Fateh Hospital as a "model") and that the outbreak is so large that deliberate, malicious infection of HIV cannot be excluded. "I don't agree with that statement," says Weiss. "And even if I did, it does not amount to sufficient evidence to incriminate the accused medical staff."
The Libyan report also suggests that because the genetic sequence of the Benghazi HIV strain is different from any lodged in public databases, there are grounds for suspecting foul play. "That's tosh," says Weiss. Montagnier agrees, pointing out that the virus was a new natural recombinant of a highly infectious strain common in Central and West Africa, which has replaced most other strains in the region over the past few years.
In contrast, Weiss describes Montagnier andColizzi's report as excellent. "Colizzi has done a really superb job in difficult circumstances," he says. After studying both reports, Weiss concludes: "There are no grounds for suspicion of deliberate infection by any staff, and strong evidence of hospital-acquired infection before the arrival, and after the departure, of the Palestinian physician and the Bulgarian nurses."

'Completely inadequate'

Jagger, an expert in occupational exposures to blood-borne pathogens, says she is astonished that the medics were even arrested, given the flimsiness of the prosecution's scientific evidence. In this sort of case, she says the minimum standard should be a thorough field study that tracks all medical procedures carried out during the outbreak, and calculates attack rates, epidemic curves and other standard epidemiology measures for inferring cause. She describes the Libyan data as "completely inadequate".
To firmly establish any cause, a case-control study should also have been done, Jagger adds, comparing risk factors and medical procedures used between the HIV-infected patients and a similar uninfected group to try and explain transmission. "Inexcusably, there has been no attempt by Libyan officials to conduct an epidemiological study that could establish a causal link between the infected patients and individual care givers."
Luc Perrin, a clinical virologist at Geneva University Hospital in Switzerland, who has treated many of the infected children, describes the Libyan report as "a lot of generalities that are not always correct". The report also fails to provide any evidence for its assertion that HIV infection has not been seen in children at other Libyan hospitals, he says.
Perrin is an expert on primary HIV infection. He has analysed samples from 148 of the infected children, collected in September 1998, and has obtained further data on 37 of them and 46 of their parents, when they were treated in Switzerland. Perrin says his genetic data support Colizzi's analysis, and that many of the 1998 samples have protein profiles corresponding to infections well over a year old: "I can tell for sure that the HIV infection cases occurred before September 1997 and the first cases most likely before 1996." The accused medics first arrived in Libya in March 1998.
The Libyan report is also silent on the prevalence of hepatitis at Al-Fateh Hospital and other Libyan hospitals, notes Perrin × who found that half of the HIV-infected children were also infected with hepatitis B or C. He says these high levels "clearly indicate" that the children were exposed to infection via contaminated blood or other medical material. Moreover, many of the children were infected with several subtypes of hepatitis, suggesting they were exposed to hospital contamination on multiple occasions, possibly when receiving vaccination injections. "If a single source of contaminated blood had caused the HIV outbreak, all the children would be infected by the same hepatitis C subtype," says Perrin. "What we observed can [instead] be explained by the reuse of syringes or poor sterilization procedures."
Perrin believes the most likely scenario is that a child who was infected with HIV in Al-Fateh in 1997 or earlier, returned to the hospital in 1998. "The child now is highly infectious, so poor medical procedures or sterilization procedures will rapidly translate into a number of new HIV infections."

'Sinister legacy'

Perrin was commissioned to write reports for the Libyan government in 2000 and 2001, and for President Muammar Gaddafi in 2004, but says that they received no response. "It is strange that I was asked by the World Health Organization representative of Libya to investigate, and received a grant for that, that I sent the reports accordingly and finally the report is not considered," he says. Testimony he submitted to the court was also rejected, he adds.
The purported 'smoking gun' in the Libyan report is the detection of HIV antibodies in vials allegedly found at one of the nurses' homes during a raid in 1999, but not tested until 2003. Both Montagnier and Colizzi have seen the results of a western blot, a test to detect proteins: they are "indeterminate", says Montagnier. "They say nothing," adds Colizzi. In 2002 Libya promised that they could test the samples independently, but neither has ever been given access.
Even a positive test could detect only antibodies to HIV. It would not show that the vials had contained the virus, points out Massimo Amicosante, a biologist also at Tor Vergata. "This is one of the main weak and controversial points of the Libyan report," he says. Finding the virus would require testing for HIV RNA, which has not been done.
After reviewing the evidence, experts are in no doubt as to the consequences of a guilty verdict. "If the accused are found guilty, it will be a travesty of justice," says Weiss. "Moreover, it would be foolhardy for any expatriate healthcare worker, whether from the Arab world or elsewhere, to work in Libya."
Jagger's conclusions are similar: "There is a shocking lack of evidence in this case," she says. "The Libyan government stands to carry out an act that would not be forgotten by the international healthcare community. Such a horrific humanitarian tragedy would stand for ever as a sinister legacy of the Libyan government."

Council on Foreign Relations
October 26, 2006

Six Imprisoned Health Care Workers In Libya Are Pawns In A Far Larger Strategic Game, With Enormous Repercussions
By Laurie Garrett, Senior Fellow for Global Health

The scientific community, AIDS activists and Libyan government would do well to recognize that the political and diplomatic import of the case of the Benghazi Six involves a great deal more than the lives of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian physician. At stake are some of the most profound political issues of our time: terrorism, nuclear proliferation, the freedom of movement of health care workers and scientists and the Biological Weapons Convention. Though human rights advocates rightly decry the physical torture these individuals have been subjected to, and their death sentences, it is critical to recognize that the unfortunate Benghazi Six - Bulgarian nurses Snezhana Dimitrova, Nasya Nenova, Valentina Siropulo, Valya Chervenyashka, and Kristina Vylcheva, and Palestinian physician Ahmed Ashraf Al Hadjudi - are pawns in a far larger game.
In 2003 Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the longtime leader of Libya, initiated discussions through American and European diplomatic channels signaling interest in placing Libya within the larger world community. Isolated under the labels of "rogue state" and "supporter of terrorism" Libya was constrained by United Nations sanctions which, among other things, limited that country's ability to pump and sell its vast oil reserves, or purchase the vital electronics and equipment needed to modernize its oil fields. Breaking those constraints meant renouncing all ties to terrorism and admitting responsibility for the 1988 explosion of Pan Am flight 103, the jet that crashed into Lockerbie after a bomb placed in the jet's cargo hold by Libyan operatives exploded, claiming the lives of 270 people. Gaddafi, after initially denying any Libyan responsibility for the international crime, in 1999 handed over one of his intelligence officers for trial in Scotland , where he remains in prison today.
Pained by the sanctions, Libya in 2003 formally acknowledged to the UN Security Council responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing, and began negotiations with representatives of the families of the Flight 103 victims: Libya ultimately paid the families $2.16 billion in 2005; another $540 million in promised payment was withdrawn by Libya because the U.S. Bush Administration maintained the country on its terrorism watch list.
In addition, the Gaddafi government has quietly admitted to working with Pakistani nuclear weapons scientist Dr. Abdul Qadeer "A.Q." Khan. Libya has not only abandoned its nuclear weapons dreams, but cooperated in international investigations of A.Q. Khan's dangerous spread of nuclear weapons-related knowledge and equipment to a laundry list of states.
Libya is now on a path to joining the world as a global citizen. But the process is far from complete. On May 16, 2006 Sec. of State Condoleeza Rice announced that the U.S. and Libya were initiating normalization of relations. But America has not yet positioned an Ambassador in Tripoli , as normalization is a multi-staged process that could drag out for many years if either of the two countries is dissatisfied with the proceedings. Many players are observing the process closely, including the European Union and the United Nations Security Council. If any major player believes Libya is reneging on agreements, or acting in bad faith, the normalization process could be imperiled.
The stakes are very high for Libya, as the nation is desperate to play a dominant role in the global petroleum market, to modernize, and to become a technological leader in the Middle East . At a time when the Gulf States are building large universities modeled after MIT and Harvard, Libya has a per capita GNI [Gross National Income] of $5,500, is unwilling to provide adult literacy data to the U.N., and has a population dominated by children - 30 percent of Libyans are under 14 years of age. [1]
It is in Libya's urgent interests to acquire an image of openness to scientific exchange and expertise. But Libya must demonstrate that first, it will not use such scientific openness to acquire the capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction, and secondly, that it will respect the human rights of foreign professionals who work on Libyan soil.
And so we come to the Benghazi Six.
Imprisoned since 1999 the five Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian physicians "confessed" to the crime of working with the CIA to deliberately infect 426 Libyan children with HIV. Their confessions were extracted after extensive torture, some of which was eyewitnessed by a Bulgarian engineer who was jailed simultaneously for 174 days on unrelated charges. On May 16, 2006 the engineer, Smilian Tachev, held a press conference in Sofia, Bulgaria, revealing the conditions to which the Benghazi Six were subjected:
"The nurses were beaten with many-stranded wire, for a long time and painfully," Tachev said. "Then they were made to run, crawl, stand on one leg with their hands stretched up. When they collapsed totally, they were dragged somewhere and brought back in a helpless state." Tachev added that he witnessed the use of probes to force unidentified objects down the women's throats, electrocution, and dogs loosed on the screaming victims. [2]
For seven years the nurses and doctor have been imprisoned, facing a sequence of Libyan judicial proceedings, and in 2004 were sentenced to death by firing squad. By all accounts their lives have taken this hideous turn for arbitrary reasons. When it was revealed in 1998 that 426 children that had been hospitalized in a facility in which the
Benghazi Six worked were now HIV+, the Gaddafi government rounded up every foreign-born physician, nurse and technician employed in the facility. Though local medical personnel decried the unsanitary conditions of the hospital, and blamed reused syringes for the spread of HIV among pediatric patients, the Libyan government charged these six with a crime and released the other foreigners. [3] In early 2006 Gaddafi added another name to the list of alleged criminals - Switzerland's prominent AIDS researcher Luc Perrin, who had years after the Benghazi Six were arrested, examined some of the infected children and studied their blood samples in his Geneva University Hospital laboratory. [4]
Emotions have reached fever pitch among the families of the HIV-infected children.
They have held demonstrations calling for the health care workers' executions, burning American and Bulgarian flags. And they have insisted that Bulgaria and the United States must make payments to the childrenÒ families that are equal to the amounts Libya paid the Lockerbie victimsÒ survivors. Bulgaria and the United States refuse.
Meanwhile, the stakes are high for scientists and health care workers, generally. The world is shy 4.3 million health care workers, with the greatest deficits being felt in poor countries hard-hit by HIV, tuberculosis and malaria. [5] If there is any hope of conquering the AIDS pandemic, physicians, nurses, technicians and scientists must be free to work in countries other than their citizenship home. In recent years, however, we have witnessed numerous incidents in which governments or religious leaders targeted foreign health professionals as part of larger political schemes: Nigerian imams, for example, claimed American-made polio vaccines contained HIV, spawning a global resurgence of polio. Freedom for the Benghazi Six would move the world towards restoring principles of free movement for legitimate health care workers and scientists.
Indeed, the HIV+ children of Libya deserve access to the same quality of medical care as their pediatric counterparts in Europe and North America enjoy. The best way for them to obtain years of quality life is through guarantees that doctors, nurses, scientists and pharmacists, expert in HIV/AIDS treatment, have safe access to their country and its hospitals.
Libya is fortunate that Bulgaria, then a young post-communist state, did not insist that charges be filed with the Biological Weapons Convention. Bulgaria should have done so. After all, Gaddafi claimed that Bulgaria and the U.S. CIA colluded in a fiendish plot to deliberately release a microorganism into the Libyan population. Had the claim been processed as a formal charge, weapons inspectors would have had formal access to blood samples, hospital records and other vital information that would undoubtedly have cleared the Benghazi Six. Moreover, a signal would have been sent to the world regarding claims of bioterrorism, and the burden of their proof. [6] In the event, Libya's failure to invoke the Biological Weapons Convention to fully investigate the criminal allegations undermines the credibility of GaddafiÒs charges and the convictions of these health care workers.
It is critical that the scientific community recognize what is at stake in this case: It is your freedom of movement and work; it is the strength and validity of the Biological Weapons Convention; it is LibyaÒs laudable willingness to remove itself from the list of nations that support terrorism and seek nuclear weapons capability. And it is freedom for six unjustly treated colleagues.

-----------------------------

[1] The World Bank, Development and the Next Generation, World Development Report 2007, pg. 298, Washington , D.C.
[2] Garrett, L., "America shouldn't befriend Libya just yet," International Herald Tribune, June 11, 2006.
[3] Pancevski, B., "Retrial ordered for health workers imprisoned in Libya," The Lancet 367:292 (2006).
[4] Swiss Radio International, "Gaddafi Fingers Swiss Doctor," swissinfo, Jan. 26, 2006.
[5] Global Equity Initiative, Human Resources for Health: Overcoming the Crisis, Joint Learning Initiative, Cambridge, Massachussetts, 2004.
[6] Garrett, L., HIV and National Security: Where Are the Links?, p. 35, Council on Foreign Relations, New York , 2005.

Nature
November 2, 2006

An open letter to Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi

Dear Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi:

We, Nobel Laureates in the sciences, are gravely concerned about the ongoing trial of five Bulgarian nurses, Valya Chervenyashka, Snezhana Dimitrova, Nasya Nenova, Valentina Siropulo, Kristiana Valcheva, and a Palestinian doctor, Ashraf Ahmad Jum'a, in Tripoli. The six face death-penalty charges of deliberately infecting 426 children with HIV at al-Fateh Children's Hospital in Benghazi in 1998. Strong scientific evidence is needed to establish the cause of this infection. However, independent science-based evidence from international experts has so far not been permitted in court.

Libya is currently making efforts to join the community of peaceful nations by renouncing weapons of mass destruction and adhering to international standards regarding the rule of law. This trial is another opportunity for Libya to demonstrate its commitment to recognized values and norms. But so far Libya has failed to follow the norms of international justice in the case of the charged medical workers.

We appreciate the agony and the sadness of the parents of these children and we sympathize with the difficult situation of the Libyan authorities in trying to deal with this matter. However, we feel that if justice is to be served it is essential that the defence should be permitted to present its case.

Among the disallowed scientific evidence is a 2003 report, which Libya requested, and which was provided by Luc Montagnier, a co-discoverer of the virus that causes AIDS, and Italian microbiologist Vittorio Colizzi. The report concluded that the infection at the hospital resulted from poor hygiene and reuse of syringes, and also that the infections began before the arrival of the nurses and doctor in 1998.

On 29 August 2006, a Libyan prosecutor reiterated the call for the six to be given the death penalty. The next, and probably last, court hearing is scheduled for the 4 November, with a verdict expected shortly thereafter. A miscarriage of justice will take place without proper consideration of scientific evidence. We urge the appropriate authorities to take the necessary steps to permit such evidence to be used in this case.

To uphold justice, and ensure a fair trial, we affirm the need for:

Defence lawyers to have the right to call and examine witnesses on the health workers' behalf under the same conditions as witnesses called against them, and
The appropriate authorities to call upon internationally recognized experts in AIDS research to examine and testify on the evidence as to the cause of the HIV infections in the children.

Yours sincerely,

Richard J. Roberts and 113 fellow Nobel Laureates:

Philip W. Anderson, Werner Arber, David Baltimore, J. Georg Bednorz, Baruj Benacerraf, Paul Berg, J. Michael Bishop, James W. Black, Gunter Blobel, Baruch S. Blumberg, Paul D. Boyer, Sydney Brenner, Linda B. Buck, Arvid Carlsson, Thomas R. Cech, Steven Chu, Stanley Cohen, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, Leon N. Cooper, Eric A. Cornell, Paul J. Crutzen, Robert F. Curl, Jr, Christian de Duve, Pierre-Gilles De Gennes, Johann Deisenhofer, Peter C. Doherty, Renato Dulbecco, Gerald M. Edelman, Manfred Eigen, Richard R. Ernst, Andrew Z. Fire, Edmond H.Fischer, Val L. Fitch, Jerome I. Friedman, Robert F. Furchgott, Ivar Giaever, Walter Gilbert, Alfred G. Gilman, Donald A. Glaser, Sheldon L. Glashow, Roy J. Glauber, Paul Greengard, David J. Gross, Roger Guillemin, John L. Hall, Leland H. Hartwell, Dudley R. Herschbach, Antony Hewish, Roald Hoffmann, H. Robert Horvitz, David H. Hubel, Robert Huber, Russell A. Hulse, Tim Hunt, Andrew F. Huxley, Brian D. Josephson, Wolfgang Ketterle, Har Gobind Khorana, Aaron Klug, Arthur Kornberg, Roger Kornberg, Edwin G. Krebs, Herbert Kroemer, Harold W. Kroto, Paul C. Lauterbur, Leon M. Lederman, Yuan T. Lee, Anthony J. Leggett, William N. Lipscomb, Rudolph Marcus, Barry Marshall, John C. Mather, Craig C. Mello, Kary Mullis, Ferid Murad, Joseph E. Murray, Erwin Neher, Marshall W. Nirenberg, Paul M. Nurse, George A. Olah, Douglas D. Osheroff, Arno A. Penzias, William D. Phillips, John C. Polanyi, H. David Politzer, Stanley B. Prusiner, Heinrich Rohrer, F. Sherwood Rowland, Bert Sakmann, Bengt I. Samuelsson, Frederick Sanger, Richard Schrock, Phillip A. Sharp, K. Barry Sharpless, Jens C. Skou, Hamilton O. Smith, John E. Sulston, Richard E. Taylor, Gerardus tÒHooft, E. Donnall Thomas, Susumu Tonegawa, Charles H. Townes, Harold E. Varmus, Klaus Von Klitzing, Robin J. Warren, James D. Watson, Steven Weinberg, Eric F. Wieschaus, Torsten N. Wiesel, Frank Wilczek, Robert W. Wilson, Kurt Wuthrich, Rosalyn Yalow

Council on Foreign Relations
November 6, 2006

The Capital Interview: Libyan Ambassador Hails U.S. Relations But Hits ÑWrongÒ Mideast Policies
Interviewee: Ali Aujali, LibyaÒs ambassador to the United States
Interviewer: Robert McMahon, Deputy Editor

Excerpt

[E]

Q: One of the toughest remaining issues between the Western countries and Libya is the case of the Benghazi six [five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian nurse charged by Libya with infecting hundreds of children with the HIV virus]. The United States and other observers have complained that this is not a credible case. Do you see movement toward solving this case?

A: It is a very delicate domestic issue. 429 children were infected by this disease. I see and read all kind of explanations [and] sometimes it is just nonsense. It says this is a hygienic problem, OK. We have not only one hospital in Libya. We have hundreds of hospitals in Libya, why is this hygienic issue happening only in this hospital [in Benghazi]? What is wrong with Libyan-Bulgarian relations that we fabricate this issue against the Bulgarian nurses? Why? The Bulgarians, the eastern [European] countries, they participate in the Libyan development for a long time. We had with some of them a very close relationship and we still know many of them. There is no reason for Libya to do that.

The case is under the supervision of the courts, they have delayed and postponed and all this. No one in Libya, including Colonel [Muammar el-] Qaddafi, can interfere in this case. This is 429 civilians. That means 429 families. That means thousand of relatives involved and the only one who can deal with the issue is the courts. Of course, there is a tradition in Libya that we say money for blood Ö diya Ö that means if somebody kills somebody not intentionally or intentionally, there is a way we can solve this problem outside of the court and then they agree for some amount [of compensation] to give to the families. I think this is now [under consideration by] the European Union and the United States. They realize we have to figure out how we get out of this issue.

Q: So is that diya still an option now?

A: It is an option now. I think there is the creation of a fund. There is a fund to which different countries and different human rights organizations [can contribute to], set up by Libyans and by the Qaddafi Foundation, and I am hopeful that resolution will be soon. I think we have been able to get rid of many outstanding files and I think this is one of them. I am very optimistic that maybe soon we will be able to reach a solution. But you still see that [there are] many contradictions in the way it is being treated by the Western media, by the Western scientists.

Q: So to be clear, you are saying a solution lies in coming up with a mechanism to treat the victims and their families, to come up with an international mechanism?

A: To treat the issues from the point of view that to try to supply good medical care for the rest of [the victimsÒ] lives and to try also at the same time to compensate the families. Some of them sold their houses, their lands just to seek treatment for the first time when nobody was aware what was going on.

[E]

The Lancet
November 25, 2006

Editorial
Free the Benghazi Six

Their names are largely unknown, and their case has received far too little attention from the international and their own professional communities. Since 1999, five Bulgarian nurses×Valya Chervenyashka, Snezana Dimitrova, Nasya Nenova, Valentina Siropulo, Kristiana Valceva×and a Palestinian doctor, Ashraf Ahmad Jum'a, have been the victims of a miscarriage of justice in Libya. In that year, these six, who had been working since 1998 at al-Fatih Children's Hospital in Benghazi, were arrested and charged with deliberately infecting more than 400 children with HIV, and causing at least 40 deaths.

They were denied legal representation until arriving in court for trial. In prison, according to human rights organisations, they confessed to the charges, after being tortured with electric shocks to their thumbs, tongues, breasts, and genitals; beaten with cables and sticks; menaced by police dogs; deprived of sleep, and raped. Some of the world's leading experts in HIV, including Luc Montagnier, the co-discoverer of HIV as the cause of AIDS, testified, on the basis of case records and genomic analyses done in Europe, that some of the children had been infected before the workers' arrival at the hospital. The HIV infections, the experts concluded, were caused by poor sanitary practices. But this scientific evidence was ultimately thrown out, and in 2004, the six were sentenced to death by firing squad. Nine Libyan health-care workers who were also charged in the case were acquitted. The six foreigners have been on death row ever since. The case was overturned by the Libyan Supreme Court, and a retrial granted. A verdict is expected on Dec 19.

The Lancet unreservedly denounces this miscarriage of justice. A great deal is at stake here, including Libya's political and diplomatic future. Libya must acknowledge that this case has no legal foundation, and then move to correct the conditions that created the whole sorry situation in the first place. Reforming its broken health-care system and ultimately improving the health of its children and indeed all of its citizens, must begin with saving these six lives.

Nature
December 6, 2006

Molecular HIV evidence backs accused medics
Declan Butler

International experts in DNA forensics say that a paper published online by Nature this week provides a firm alibi for the six medical workers facing the death penalty in Libya. The workers have been charged with deliberately infecting more than 400 children with HIV in 1998.

In the study, an international team led by researchers from Oxford and Rome used the genetic sequences of the viruses isolated from the patients to reconstruct the exact phylogeny, or 'family tree', of the outbreak. Analysing the mutations that accumulated over time allowed the researchers to work out when different outbreaks occurred. They showed that the strain of HIV with which the children had been infected was already present and spreading locally in the mid-1990s, long before the medics arrived in Libya in 1998.

The trial of the six medical workers ended in Tripoli on 4 November, and a verdict is expected on 19 December. Despite mounting international pressure to free them, defence lawyers are pessimistic about the outcome, and Nature has fast-tracked publication to make this new evidence available before the verdict (see Nature 444, 2006).

There was already a body of scientific evidence indicating that the outbreak was caused not by deliberate transmission, but by poor hygiene at the Al-Fateh hospital in Benghazi, where the outbreak took place (see Nature 443, 888Ö889; 2006). Analysis of hospital records suggested that the outbreak began before the medics arrived. And almost half of the HIV-infected children were also infected with hepatitis B or C, pointing to poor hospital practices as the cause.

The new results provide independent genetic confirmation of these findings. As well as showing that the outbreaks predated the medics' arrival, the study suggests that the HIV strain is related most closely to strains from West Africa, suggesting a natural introduction, probably via the many migrant workers in Libya, says co-author Tulio de Oliveira of the University of Oxford, UK.

Other phylogenetic analyses of HIV have been used in court cases involving allegations of HIV infection. The first was in 1991, when a Florida dentist was shown to have contaminated his patients. The technique has since been accepted as evidence in dozens of cases involving rape, hospital infection transmissions and people with HIV knowingly exposing others in Sweden, France and elsewhere.

Thomas Leitner of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has provided forensic HIV evidence in more than 30 such cases over the past 15 years. He describes the de Oliveira paper as "compelling evidence that the outbreak had started before the accused could have started it", a view shared by every expert that Nature contacted (see 'Expert Opinion').

Leitner points out that calculating evolutionary timescales is tricky, but that because HIV has such a fast mutation rate, even recent events can be pinpointed quite accurately. "De Oliveira et al. have tested and evaluated the clock and its uncertainty using several methods," he says. "I find their analysis well done and timely, and hope it will affect the judgement in the Libyan court."

Expert Opinion

The following scientists have all previously testified in court cases involving HIV molecular evidence. They assess the new data.

"This study is an impressive statistical analysis. It shows clearly that the hypothesis of deliberately injecting children with HIV in 1998 should be rejected."
Philippe Lemey, expert on HIV evolution, Rega Institute for Medical Research, Belgium.

"This is exactly the kind of objective phylogenetic analysis needed in this case. The results clearly show that the health workers were not responsible for the introduction of these HIV strains."
David Hillis, expert on viral phylogenies, the University of Texas, Austin.

"This kind of analysis has been approved by courts around the world. This is a case of [hospital] infection with multiple, independent sources, a pattern most easily explained by sloppy or inappropriate practices at the hospital."
Fernando Gonzalez Candelas, evolutionary geneticist, the University of Valencia, Spain.

"The existing epidemiological data are already enough to demonstrate that the accused medical staff cannot be the source of the contamination. De Oliveira's analysis is completely independent, and yields the same conclusion. The court cannot pretend to be impartial if it refuses to hear any competent scientist from abroad."
Michel Milinkovitch, evolutionary geneticist, the Free University of Brussels, Belgium.

"They have used state-of-the-art methods to estimate divergence and dates of events in this outbreak. The analysis shows compelling evidence that the outbreak had started before the accused could have started it."
Thomas Leitner, expert in HIV evolution, Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico.

* * *

World Politics Watch
December 13, 2006

Medical Workers' Trial is Test Case for Libya's Progress
Juliette Terzieff

Five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor accused of intentionally infecting over 400 children with HIV as part of a CIA and Israeli intelligence plot are scheduled to have their fate decided by order of the Libyan high court on Dec. 19.

On May 6, 2004, the six defendants were sentenced to death by firing squad in a trial observers say flaunted disrespect for human rights in every respect. Nine Libyan health workers also charged in the case were acquitted the same day.

Libya's Supreme Court threw out the verdict in early 2005 following Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi's efforts to court the international community and in the face widespread condemnation, and called for the retrial that ended last month. During the retrial, the prosecution asked for the lower court's death sentences to be upheld, while the defense argued evidence had been manipulated and procedures violated.

"The trial should be fair and equitable, until now it has been anything but," Emmanuel Altit, a French lawyer volunteering with Lawyers Without Borders to help represent the six, said on the eve of the latest Nov. 4 hearing.

"We express empathy with the HIV victims. However, their suffering is no excuse for the false charges against six medical workers whose only crime is that they are foreigners who devoted their energy to caring for their patients," Altit says.

Geopolitical and economic interests have kept international diplomatic protest to a minimum, leaving scientists, lawyers, human rights groups, and desperate Bulgarian officials to champion efforts for their release. With a climax to the decade-long ordeal looming, pleas for justice are pouring in from around the globe.

Nobel Prize winner Dr. Richard J, Roberts hand-delivered an open letter to Qaddafi to Libya's representative to the United Nations from 114 Nobel laureates warning "a miscarriage of justice will take place without proper consideration of scientific evidence" and urging Middle Eastern and Western governments to exert influence over Qaddafi to prevent "what might amount to judicial murder."

The Lancet, a top British medical journal, urged Libya to acknowledge the case has no legal foundation and address the poor conditions that gave rise to the situation.

"Reforming [Libya's] broken health-care system and ultimately improving the health of its children and indeed all of its citizens, must begin with saving these six lives," the Lancet article said.

Lawyers without Borders, a Toulouse, France-based group that coordinates volunteer lawyers from around the globe, is vowing to continue representing the accused -- known as the Benghazi Six -- and is pleading for international support to increase pressure on Libya to honor international legal standards and end the medics' decade-long nightmare.

Dreams Destroyed

For the six medical professionals, moving to Libya in 1998 was a chance to earn salaries triple what they would get at home. The Bulgarians sought escape from $200-a-month average salaries in their home country and the Palestinian avoided joining the ranks of Palestine's 60 percent unemployed.

Accompanied by their dreams for a better future, the five Bulgarian nurses (Kristiana Malinova Valcheva, Nasya Stojcheva Nenova, Valentina Manolova Siropulo, Valya Georgieva Chervenyashka and Snezhanka Ivanova Dimitrova) and Palestinian Dr. Ashraf Ahmad Jum'a arrived in Benghazi to work at the al-Fateh Children's Hospital.

A year later the medics were arrested without warning along with dozens of foreign medical workers after 393 children at al-Fateh were found to have HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. All but the six now facing death were released.

Nurse Valcheva's husband, Dr. Zdravko Georgiev, employed in another Libyan city by a South Korean company, raced to be by his wife's side, only to be arrested and charged as a co-conspirator. Georgiev spent over four years in jail and was released for "time served" on May 6, 2004 -- the day his wife received the death sentence.

Investigations into the case by Amnesty International found that in the first nine months of their incarceration, the medics were allowed access to embassy representatives only three times.

"Not all of the defendants were present at the first two meetings. For example, Nasya Stojcheva Nenova and Valya Georgieva Chervenyashka were not brought to the meeting on 25 February 1999, apparently because they exhibited scars of torture which they had undergone," said a 2004 Amnesty International report. "The Bulgarian defendants told Amnesty International delegates that those torturing them instructed them not to mention their treatment to their diplomatic representatives."

The defendants were tortured daily for the first three months of their captivity in efforts to elicit confessions -- torture that included electric shocks, being threatened by barking dogs, falaqa (beatings on the sole of the feet), and in the case of two nurses, rape, according to Amnesty International.

It took interrogators three takes -- with beatings in between and after -- to elicit a taped confession from the Palestinian doctor. When the public prosecutor demanded Jum'a repeat the confession in person -- interrogators beat him again in the offices of the legal representative.

The first time the medics saw a lawyer was February 2000, after their trial had already opened.

Qaddaffi alleged that the medics were part of a CIA-Mossad plot to test out the effects of using HIV/AIDS as a weapon to destroy other countries. He later recanted the statement.

In a critical blow to the defense, the prosecutor instructed the judges' panel to ignore the September 2003 testimony of French doctor Luc Montagnier, co-discoverer of the HIV virus. Montagnier visited al-Fateh hospital and co- authored an exhaustive report with Italian AIDS researcher Vittorio Colizzi on the cause of the infections, which according to the report began in 1997 -- a full year before any of the accused arrived in Libya.

The scientists also found the infections to be an inevitable outcome of inadequate equipment, unskilled staff and the reuse of unsterile needles.

"This tragedy is probably due to negligence," Montagnier testified. "This can happen not only in this hospital, but in many others, particularly pediatric hospitals, because children are more vulnerable to infection, even by very small quantities of blood."

As with the original trial, scientific evidence presented by the defense was ignored in the retrial.

In the meantime, four dozen of the infected children have died. The remaining youngsters, suffering from a wide range of auxiliary illnesses including hepatitis and tuberculosis, have been moved over the last few months to hospitals and treatment centers in Western Europe.

"There is a lack of hygiene, a lack of infection control, a lack of a system to protect patients from blood-borne infections and now all of the children are in Europe because they don't understand [HIV/AIDS] and don't know how to deal with it," Colizzi said of Libya's troubled health care system. "Politically, they try to deny the nature of the problem, to say the country is safe since the Bulgarians are in jail."

Libya's New Public Relations Campaign

For years Libya's mercurial dictator enjoyed taunting the West and reveled in its impotent scorn, but the initial court decision came just as the North African leader embarked on an extensive public relations campaign to change his international image.

Qaddafi announced plans in 2003 to dismantle Libya's stock of weapons of mass destruction and agreed to pay compensation to victims of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and the 1989 bombing of a French airliner.

In response the United Nations Security Council removed sanctions against the oil-rich country and the United States reestablished diplomatic ties in May 2006.

The removal of sanctions paved the way for three major American oil companies -- Conoco Phillips, Amerada Hess Corporation and Marathon Oil Corporation -- to participate in development of Libya's Waha, Bahi and Defa oil fields, in which their investments had been put on hold under trade sanctions.

It also opened the doors for other foreign investment to help stabilize Libya's economy. Oil is the linchpin of Libya's government revenues, with reserves estimated to be more than $1 trillion dollars. Political concerns and trade sanctions during the last two decades left less than 25 percent of the country's oil reserves explored and 120 companies joined the bidding process to dig for new oil after sanctions began to life in 2005.

Qaddafi reportedly has offered to free the Benghazi Six in exchange for $6 billion from Bulgaria, a sum that would help replace the $10 million per family Libya paid to the airplane bombing victims' families.

Libya's U.S. Ambassador, Ali Aujali, also indicated monetary compensation to the children's families might solve the case. "There is a fund to which different countries and different human rights organizations [can contribute to], set up by Libyans and by the Qaddafi Foundation, and I am hopeful that resolution will be soon," Aujali said.

European and Bulgarian officials have publicly refused the idea of paying any compensation, although some have quietly acknowledged it may be the only way to save the six lives.

Juliette Terzieff is a columnist and correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle and a former field producer for CNN International.

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The New England Journal of Medicine
December 14, 2006

HIV Injustice in Libya × Scapegoating Foreign Medical Professionals
Elisabeth Rosenthal, M.D.

On December 19, 2006, a Libyan court is scheduled to announce its verdict in the trial of five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor who have languished in prison for 8 years on charges that they intentionally injected more than 400 Libyan children with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in 1998, while they were guest workers at a children's hospital. In 2004, the six were tried and sentenced to death. A new trial was ordered last year after international protests, but scientists and politicians are worried about the defendants' fate.

The scientific evidence being used against them "is so irrational it's unbelievable," said Vittorio Colizzi, an infectious-disease specialist based at Tor Vergata University in Rome and one of a number of international scientists who have visited Libya to study the case and treat the children. But such scientists have not been called to testify in the current trial, which began in late August.

The HIV outbreak at Al-Fateh Children's Hospital in Benghazi, Libya, that peaked in 1998 has been studied in detail by international experts, who have pored over patient charts, tested hundreds of blood samples to characterize the virus, and observed patient care activities at the hospital. All have concluded that the outbreak was nosocomial, resulting from the reuse of contaminated medical equipment. The efforts to understand the outbreak include a site visit by the World Health Organization (WHO) conducted in December 1998 and January 1999 that resulted in a 1999 report, as well as an investigation by Colizzi and Luc Montagnier,1 a codiscoverer of HIV, who were hired by the Libyan government, were given broad access to the hospital and patients, and completed their report in March 2003.

But in the Libyan court, such evidence does not seem to matter. "Science has not been respected in this court; without the scientific evidence, there's no way there could be a fair trial," said Richard Roberts, a winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, who hand-delivered a letter of protest signed by more than 100 Nobel laureates to the Libyan Mission to the United Nations in New York in late October. "The Libyan government doesn't want to admit that their hospital had a problem with hygiene that spread HIV," said Roberts. "These people were the ideal scapegoats: they were foreigners. And the Libyans knew that the Bulgarian and Palestinian governments couldn't kick up much of a fuss."

Some of the evidence suggesting that the foreign workers are innocent comes in the form of two published molecular analyses of blood samples from the children, which demonstrated remarkable similarity among the strains of HIV-1 in all the children and revealed that the majority were coinfected with hepatitis C virus (HCV) but that the HCV strains varied.2,3 This diversity of strains suggests that the hospital has a history of poor infection control, since children become infected with HCV primarily during medical procedures. In addition, according to the report by Colizzi and Montagnier, genetic analysis of blood samples from children who were last admitted to the hospital in 1997 detected the presence of HIV RNA × the same unusual virus type found in the rest of the children × indicating that the virus was in the hospital before the guest workers arrived.

Moreover, in visits to the hospital, both the WHO team and Colizzi found that syringes and other types of medical equipment that could retain infected blood were being routinely reused. Infusions of albumin, an unscreened blood product, were commonly used if a child looked weak, and the bottle and tubing were often used for more than one child.

"No evidence has been found for a deliberated injection of HIV contaminated material (bioterrorism)," wrote Colizzi and Montagnier. "Epidemiological stratification, according to admission time, of the data on seropositivity and results of molecular analysis are strongly against this possibility."

In the first trial, a panel of judges set aside this scientific evidence in favor of a dramatic cloak-and-dagger scenario based on testimony by Libyans who said they had witnessed the nurses hoarding vials of HIV-infected blood; the testimony was bolstered by confessions that the nurses have since said were elicited by torture. A panel of Libyan doctors filed a counterreport,4 which, according to Montagnier, "was filled with basic scientific errors." For example, it concluded that the virus was "genetically altered" (and therefore intentionally created) because laboratory analysis had shown it to be a "recombinant" strain of HIV. But though the strain, CRF02-AG, had not been previously reported, it resembles and is thought to be a natural mutation of a strain that is common in central Africa.

Similarly, the Libyan doctors concluded that the infections must have been deliberate because the infection rate was "too high" for nosocomial transmission, which, they argued (baselessly), could account only for rates below 3 cases per 1000 patients. Because of unsanitary practices, infection rates in Benghazi were indeed extraordinarily high, Western experts agreed. The HIV outbreak was, according to a 2001 article, "the largest documented outbreak of nosocomial transmission"2 of HIV. Although the exact figures vary, Libyan authorities now list more than 400 cases associated with the cluster, including 2 in nurses who worked at the hospital and at least 12 in mothers of the affected children.

Several dozen children have died, and their enraged families, who now form a potent political force, are demanding punishment. According to Bulgarian diplomats, last year the Libyan government suggested that Bulgaria might appease the families and obtain freedom for the accused under Islamic law by paying $10 million in "blood money" for each child. Bulgaria rejected the request, saying that acceptance would constitute an admission of guilt; the diplomats also noted that the sum would bankrupt the government.

Failing in that effort, the Libyan government this fall paid for the children to go to Europe's premier pediatric hospitals for treatment. Although most were receiving some form of antiretroviral therapy when they arrived in Europe, few had been adequately treated in Libya, said pediatric immunologist Guido Castelli-Gattinara, who recently examined dozens of the children at Bambino Gesu Hospital in Rome.

It seems that the nurses and doctor were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Last year in Sofia, Bulgaria, I spoke with the 28-year-old daughter of Valya Chervenyashka, one of the nurses, who described her mother's plight as "surreal." A nurse from the Bulgarian countryside, she had signed up to work at the hospital in Benghazi for $250 a month in order to pay her daughter's university fees. One year later, she was sitting in a Libyan prison, accused by the country's leader, Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi, of working for Israeli intelligence.

Indeed, the 200-page verdict from the first trial reads, says Colizzi, "like a bad spy film," laying out a sinister official theory of how these nurses brought AIDS to Benghazi. One nurse, the court decision says, masterminded the plan to spread HIV, storing the virus at her home in 24 green-topped blood-culture bottles. She lured the Palestinian doctor to participate in her scheme with the promise of a Bulgarian wife and $500,000 in a Swiss bank account. According to court documents, witnesses said the project was "prepared by Israeli Intelligence for political reasons and to start commotion" in Libya. The nurse supposedly carried out the plot on behalf of two English-speaking intermediaries named John and Adel, who supplied the virus. As corroborating physical evidence, investigators could point only to five "plasma bottles" purportedly found in the nurse's home, two of which they said had been shown to contain HIV. Colizzi and Montagnier examined the Western blots used and called them ambiguous. When they asked for the bottles so they could conduct their own analysis, the request was not granted.

Although the defense lawyers have repeatedly complained that key scientific evidence was being dismissed, the judge told them that such "technical" data represented just one sort of evidence. In the retrial, the court has "rejected requests for new examinations of the medical facts," according to a status report by the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry.

In view of the charts and laboratory tests he has seen, Colizzi believes that the epidemic probably began with an importation of a different sort: Libya has 1.5 million workers from sub-Saharan Africa, where some countries have HIV infection rates as high as 10 to 20%. Libyan government statistics on HIV and AIDS do not include these residents, who rely on Libya's hospitals. Perhaps an HIV-positive worker went to Al-Fateh Hospital to deliver a baby, who was born infected with HIV. Poor infection-control practices in use at the hospital, noted in the 1999 WHO review, might have allowed the virus to spread to other patients.

Indeed, just months after the nurses and doctor were first jailed, in 1998, WHO compared the outbreak to documented nosocomial HIV outbreaks in Russian and Romanian hospitals. Now, 8 years and many scientific studies later, professionals who sought to provide needed health care to Libyan children may sadly become the scapegoats for another country that is loath to admit to a homegrown HIV problem × derived, in this case, from dismal hygiene practices that are only slowly being corrected. "The court is misusing science," Richard Roberts said in explaining his decision to mobilize his fellow laureates in protest. "So scientists need to speak out."

Source Information

Dr. Rosenthal is a reporter for the International Herald Tribune.

References

Montagnier L, Colizzi V. Statement from Prof. Luc Montagnier and Prof. Vittorio Colizzi on the Benghazi nosocomial infection. (Accessed November 22, 2006, at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v443/n7114/extref/montagnier.pdf.)
Yerly S, Quadri R, Negro F, et al. Nosocomial outbreak of multiple bloodborne viral infections. J Infect Dis 2001;184:369-372. [CrossRef][ISI][Medline]
Visco-Comandini U, Cappiello G, Liuzzi G, et al. Monophyletic HIV type 1 CRF02-AG in a nosocomial outbreak in Benghazi, Libya. AIDS Res Hum Retroviruses 2002;18:727-732. [CrossRef][ISI][Medline]
Final report by the National Experts Committee regarding the scientific expert opinion required in Case 607/2003-Felonies/Benghazi. (Accessed November 22, 2006, at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v443/n7114/extref/national_experts.pdf.)

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The Observer
December 17, 2006

Medics face death while Libya uses HIV children as diplomatic pawns
Alex Duval Smith

The death in Libya six weeks ago of nine-year-old Marwa Annouiji from Aids was much more than just another developing world statistic. In her short, life, dominated by illness, the frail child was a pawn in a high-level game of international relations.
Marwa, from al-Bayda on the Mediterranean coast, was the 52nd Libyan child to die as a result, Libya claims, of a deliberate operation by foreign medical workers to pump HIV-infected blood into 426 girls and boys at the al-Fatah Hospital in Benghazi.

On Tuesday, barring some extraordinary intervention, the six medics - a Palestinian doctor and five Bulgarian nurses who have been in prison in Libya for seven years - will have their sentence confirmed by a court in the capital, Tripoli: execution by firing squad. The case has sparked unprecedented mobilisation in support of the medics among international scientists who have found the Libyan evidence groundless. European governments and the United States stand accused of abandoning the medical workers for powerful strategic and economic reasons.
'We are still hoping wisdom will prevail,' said the head of the nurses' defence team, French lawyer Emmanuel Altit. 'The court has not granted the defence its rights, the Libyan evidence in the case is discredited, and the medics' confessions were extracted under mental, physical and sexual torture.'

The six - Dr Ashraf al-Hajuj and nurses Kristiyana Vatcheva, Nasya Nenova, Valentina Siropulo, Valya Chervenyashka and Snezhana Dimitrova - took up government contracts at the hospital in Libya's second city in March 1998. The first cases of HIV infection were reported the same year. A World Health Organisation report found that the virus had probably been spread because of a lack of proper medical equipment. The six were imprisoned in March 1999. Libyan courts ordered reports from the world's top Aids scientists and epidemiologists, including Luc Montagnier, one of the discoverers of HIV. Montagnier found the high rate of hepatitis B and C at the hospital suggested that poor hygiene was to blame for the spread of HIV. But the prosecution ignored his report and ordered one from Libyan researchers in 2003.

On 6 May, 2004, the death sentences were pronounced. On Christmas Day last year the Libyan Supreme Court ordered a retrial, which led to a new call for the death sentence this August. A verdict is expected on Tuesday.

European doctors who, under a È2m (?1.3m) EU initiative, have treated the children in Libya say most are now aged around 12. They suffer from tuberculosis and other Aids-related illnesses.

According to a French foreign ministry spokesman: 'They cannot so much as go to the dentist in Benghazi because the Aids stigma is so powerful in Libya. It also appears that, because most of them are outpatients, their parents are not all administering their tablets correctly.' As a result of care problems in Libya, the 374 surviving children are now outpatients at hospitals in Italy and France.

Libyan President Muammar Gadaffi, who is reportedly terrified of dissent in the opposition hotbed of Benghazi, is paying millions of euros for their treatment at the Vatican's Bambino Gesu Hospital as well at French clinics in Lyon, Montpellier, Strasbourg and Toulouse. Experts on Libya say Gadaffi is using the children as a pawn in his discussions with Western powers over burning issues including contracts for oil, arms and aircraft and diplomatic relations in the Middle East. Gadaffi also remains bitter about the pariah status he acquired after the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. Earlier this year Libya said Bulgaria should pay the families of the children $2.7bn (?1.8bn) in compensation - which is exactly the sum paid by Libya for the 270 lives lost in the Pan Am 103 bombing.

International scientists say the 2003 Libyan report was written by 'pseudo experts' and has no value. Last week a paper in Nature magazine by a team led by British evolutionary biologist Oliver Pybus show ed that the Benghazi strain of HIV was introduced at the hospital before the arrival of the medics.

Pybus, of Oxford University, said: 'By looking at the genome sequence of the virus found in children at Bambino Gesu hospital, we established that the estimated date of the most common recent ancestor for each cluster predated March 1998, sometimes by several years. The virus is of a kind found in West Africa, which makes sense as Libya has a large population of guest workers from there.'

The medics' lawyers hope that, even if the death sentences are confirmed on Tuesday, the case will return to the Supreme Court where a judicial council could throw it out for a second time. But Altit said diplomatic efforts to secure the medics' release after more than seven years in jail had been disappointing. 'Libya is coming out of the cold and there are many lucrative contracts in the works. If the sentences are confirmed it will be a disgrace for the European Union. If there is one thing Europe stands for, it is values, such as justice.' A Foreign Office spokesman would not comment on the accusation that European governments were sacrificing the medics in the name of trade relations. But he said: 'The case is not over yet and we understand it will go to the Supreme Court. The EU has made significant efforts to help the families and upgrade facilities at the hospital. We hope these efforts show that everyone sympathises with the families.'

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Reuters
December 19, 2006

FACTBOX
Profiles of foreign medics in Libyan HIV case

A Libyan court will rule on Tuesday in the cases of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of deliberately infecting more than 400 children with the HIV virus in a Benghazi hospital.

Bulgaria's allies, the United States and the European Union, say the medics are innocent, citing evidence they were tortured to confess and that the epidemic began before they worked at the clinic.

In June 2005 a Libyan court acquitted nine Libyan policemen and a doctor of torturing the medics.

Following are profiles of the accused who have been jailed in Libya since 1999:

SNEZHANA DIMITROVA, 54: Of the five nurses, Dimitrova's health is most fragile. Formerly a nurse in Sofia, she suffered a nervous breakdown in 2005 and broke her leg this autumn.

Dimitrova, jailed six months after her arrival at the Al-Fateh hospital in 1998, says it is inconceivable that a nurse and a mother could commit the crime of which she is accused. She has a daughter, Polina, who is now 26 and a son Ivailo, 33.

VALIA CHERVENIASHKA, 51: Cherveniashka, a nurse from the small northwest Bulgarian town of Biala Slatina, began working in Benghazi in February 1998. She says she was beaten by Libyan guards but did not confess to infecting the children.

Her husband, Emil Uzunov, staged a hunger strike in 2003 at the Libyan embassy. He and Cherveniashka's two daughters, 28 and 29, have criticised Sofia's handling of the case, saying dozens of nationals from Poland, Thailand and other countries were also
arrested but later released.

NASYA NENOVA, 40: A nurse for five years in the eastern Bulgarian town of Sliven, she travelled to work in Libya in February 1998 and was jailed around a year later.
She tried to kill herself after she said she was tortured with electric shocks. She has a son Radoslav, 19, who was in secondary school when she was arrested and is now in university.

CHRISTIANA VALCHEVA, 47: Valcheva worked six years in Sofia hospitals as a nurse before travelling to Benghazi in 1998. Libyan prosecutors say she is the mastermind behind the case, basing their evidence on blood bags found in her house in Libya, although she never worked in the children's hospital itself.

"With God as my witness, I am innocent," she told the court in the last trial, when her husband Zdravko Georgiev was acquitted of infecting children. She has a 29-year-old son.

VALENTINA SIROPOULO, 47: A nurse for 18 years in the town of Pazardzhik before travelling to Libya in February 1998, Siropoulo, who is married, says she is innocent and she showed compassion to the children in the AIDS ward where she worked.

She said beatings and torture with electric shocks left her with partial paralysis to her face and unable to talk for months. She has a 26-year-old son.

ASHRAF ALHAJOUJ: A Palestinian doctor in his late 30s who has lived most of his life in Libya, he strongly protests his innocence and says the charges were fabricated by the police. He was born in the Egyptian city of Alexandria in 1969 and came to Libya when he was 2 years old. Educated and trained in Libya, he has said it is inconceivable he could harm Libyan children.

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The Christian Science Monitor
December 19, 2006

At stake in Libyan HIV trial: EU relations
If a Tripoli court sentences six medics to death Tuesday, Qaddafi could push for reparations in return for clemency.
By Michael J. Jordan | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

SOFIA, BULGARIA
In an eight-year-old case that could harm Libya's improving relations with the West, a Tripoli court will announce Tuesday whether five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor should be sentenced to death for allegedly infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV.

International HIV experts have concluded that the virus could not have come from the foreign medics in 1998, but was present earlier.

So the case, say observers, is about far more than the scientific evidence. With Bulgaria set to join the European Union on Jan. 1, Libyan leader Col. Muammar Qaddafi could use the fate of the nurses as a bargaining chip in his country's historically stormy relations with Europe.

"From a scientific point of view, [the medics] are clearly innocent," says Declan Butler, a senior reporter for Nature, the world's top peer-reviewed scientific journal, which has led an international campaign on behalf of the accused. "But there are clearly economic and political stakes here. We have to be vigilant that these six aren't shelved or sacrificed."

Libya has indicated it would offer clemency in exchange for reparations of $13.11 million paid to each of the 426 children's families - an amount that would far exceed the $2.7 billion Libya paid for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 people over Lockerbie, Scotland, and spurred Libya's international isolation.

Meanwhile, Bulgarian authorities here would face an unenviable choice: In effect admit wrongdoing by paying compensation for the release of their nurses - women who, in interviews with Human Rights Watch and others, have accused their captors of using rape and torture to extract confessions - or refuse to concede and let them die.

"The position here is, if we pay for de facto hostages, we are politically admitting our guilt," says Emil Tsenkov, an analyst with the Center for the Study of Democracy in Sofia, the Bulgarian capital. "It could also encourage similar behavior in the future."

Yet Qaddafi also appears to have backed himself into a corner. The infection took place at the al-Fatah Hospital in Benghazi, a Mediterranean coastal area and hotbed of dissent toward one of the toughest dictatorships in the world. Casting the spotlight on what foreign observers say is probably the real culprit - the Libyan healthcare system - could trigger public outrage and rattle the regime's foundation.

Meanwhile, the families of the infected children - who are now being treated in Italian and French hospitals - demand justice from those whom Tripoli and the state-controlled Libyan media blame: the foreigners.

"It's very difficult to understand the stance of those in solidarity with the accused," wrote the Al-Shams newspaper recently, according to Reuters. "Who deserves greater reason for solidarity - the children who are dying without having committed any offense, or those in white coats who distributed death and wiped the smile from the lips of hundreds of families?"

The Bulgarian nurses were independent contractors in Libya, continuing a practice begun decades ago when communist Bulgaria sent its medics to ideologically friendly nations, many in the Arab world.

They stand accused of infecting the children in March 1998. But in an academic paper published last week, Nature quoted British evolutionary biologist Oliver Pybus, who asserted after examining young Libyan victims in Rome that the HIV strain derived from West Africa.

"Which makes sense, as Libya has a large population of guest workers from there," Pybus added. The Nature article also said that the virus strain was present in the mid-1990s, well before the Bulgarian nurses arrived.

Since beginning serious negotiations to join the EU in the late 1990s, Bulgaria turned to Brussels for diplomatic assistance in the case.

The campaign on the medics' behalf got a boost in early November, with the signatures of 114 Nobel scientific laureates petitioning for a fair trial involving credible scientific evidence. But the campaign organizer today says he's less optimistic they'll receive one.

"I tend to be pretty cynical, but my guess is that economic interests would trump it," says physiologist Richard J. Roberts, recipient of the 1993 Nobel Prize for medicine. "We live in a world where money has become so important as to be a religion, and everything else comes in second."

Both Brussels and Washington have welcomed rapprochement efforts by oil-rich Libya since 2003, when the US-led war in Iraq seemed to convince Mr. Qaddafi to abandon his nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs. But beyond oil, weapons of mass destruction, and war-on-terror cooperation, other EU-Libyan issues are on the table, such as working together to deter illegal migrants from setting sail from the North African nation. Whether Brussels will exert any leverage is unclear.

"The Libyans want to get closer to the Europeans," says Hugo Brady, a research fellow at the Center for European Reform in London. "When very sensitive issues arise, even judges tend to be aware of factors outside their courts."

Washington has been low-key during the affair, though Libyan media reported that US Assistant Secretary of State David Welch, who helped restore US diplomatic ties with Libya, arrived in Tripoli on Friday.

"We have for some time said we think it's important that those nurses and medics be returned to their home country at the earliest possible moment," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack at a Dec. 6 briefing.

In Sofia, meanwhile, ordinary Bulgarians express fatigue with the long ordeal of the nurses and frustration with perceived impotence of both the Bulgarian government and international community to win their freedom.

But opinion on the street is mixed: Some are resigned to the nurses' fate and back the government's stand not to concede guilt; others, though, say the nurses' welfare must be the top priority.

"No one can return these years to them," says a fellow nurse named Vania. "We should pay whatever they want us to, because justice should be served at any cost."

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The Times, London
December 19, 2006

Outrage over death sentence in Libyan HIV case
Elsa McLaren and agencies

Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were today sentenced to death by a court in Libya for deliberately infecting hundreds of children with the HIV virus.

The ruling immediately brought a chorus of international condemnation and could prove to be a setback for Libya's efforts to improve ties with the West.

Bulgaria's foreign ministry called the decision "deeply disappointing" and urged Libya's leadership to intervene in the case and free the nurses.

Bulgaria has maintained that the children were infected by unhygienic conditions at the Benghazi hospital, in the north of Libya, where they were being treated.

"Sentencing innocent people to death is an attempt to cover up the real culprits and the real reasons for the AIDS outbreak in Benghazi," said Georgi Pirinski, a Bulgarian parliamentary speaker.

However, shouts of joy met the decision in the Tripoli courtroom.

"God is great!" yelled Ibrahim Mohammed al-Aurabi, the father of an infected child, as soon as the verdict was announced. "Long live the Libyan judiciary!"

The five Bulgarians and Palestinian were accused of infecting 426 Libyan children with HIV at a hospital in Benghazi in the late 1990s.

The medics, who denied the charge, have all been detained for nearly seven years. The five Bulgarian nurses are Snezhana Dimitrova, 54, Alia Cherveniashka, 51, Nasya Nenova, 40, Christiana Valcheva, 47, and Valentina Siropoulo, 47. The Palestinian doctor is Ashraf Alhajouj, who is in his late 30s.

They were previously sentenced to death by firing squad in 2003, but that conviction was overturned last year following international protests over the fairness of the proceedings.

It is likely that they will appeal against today's verdict to the Libyan Supreme Court.

Judge Mahmoud Haouissa did not say how they would be executed.

International legal observer, Francois Cantier of Lawyers Without Borders, criticised the retrial for failing to admit enough scientific evidence. He said samples from the infected children showed that their viruses were contracted before the six defendants started working at the hospital in question.

"We need scientific evidence. It is a medical issue, not only a judicial one," Mr Cantier said after the verdict.

Dr Luc Montagnier, who is credited with discovering HIV, had testified in the first trial that the deadly virus was active in the hospital before the Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian doctor began their contracts there in 1998.

Nature magazine also published an analysis of HIV and hepatitis virus samples from the children earlier this month, which concluded that the virus was contracted up to three years before the six defendants arrived at the hospital. But it was too late to be submitted as evidence in the trial.

The long trial has hampered oil producer Libya's rapprochement with the West, which moved up a gear when it abandoned its pursuit of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in 2003.

The United States and the European Union, which Bulgaria is due to join on January 1, have both called for the defendants to be released citing evidence that they were tortured to confess and that evidence points to the virus being present at the hospital before their employment.

Franco Frattini, the European Union Justice and Security Commissioner, said he was shocked and disappointed by the ruling and Amnesty International has also condemned the decision.

Relatives of the infected children - about 50 of whom have already died of Aids - waited outside the court early this morning, holding poster-sized pictures of their children and bearing placards that read "Death for the children killers; and "HIV made in Bulgaria."

After the verdict, relatives at the court gates chanted "Execution! Execution!"

Many parents have demanded compensation or "blood money" of up to $13.10 million for each infected child to quash the verdicts. Bulgaria has refused to pay, saying that doing so would be an admission of guilt.

In Bulgaria, hundreds of people staged peaceful protests in support of the five nurses yesterday.

Their families were distraught on hearing the verdict. "This is such a disgrace. I simply cannot believe that such injustice can be done," said Polina Dimitrova, daughter of Mrs Dimitrova. "I can only imagine how they feel - this must have crushed them."

* * *

The Times, London
December 20, 2006

Gaddafi faces outrage as nurses on mercy mission are sentenced to die
Charles Bremner in Paris

Six blamed for giving children HIV
Second trial after seven years in jail

Five nurses who travelled to Libya to care for sick children were facing death by firing squad last night after being found guilty of deliberately infecting 426 young patients with HIV.

Their conviction, after seven years in jail and two trials, prompted an international outcry and raised the stakes for Colonel Muammar Gaddafi as he tries to regain favour with Europe and the US.

Legal appeals are expected to lead to fresh diplomatic negotiations aimed at a face-saving arrangement for the Libyan leader, who faces domestic pressure for vengeance against an alleged foreign plot to infect children with the virus.

The five Bulgarian women wept as Judge Mahmoud Haouissa pronounced the sentences at the end of a trial that was condemned by scientists, Western governments and human rights organisations.

Ashraf Alhajouj, a Palestinian doctor in his late thirties who received the same sentence, sat impassively behind the bars of the dock. ÓThe verdict doesnÒt change anything. We are still innocent,Ô he said.

The court also ordered the Libyan State to pay the families between $250,000 (?127,000) and $900,000 for each victim. The defendantsÒ lawyer said that they would appeal.

Aids experts and 114 Nobel prizewinners had called for the swift release of the medical workers. However, relatives of the infected children were delighted. Families celebrated by dancing outside the court. ÓWe are happy,Ô said Subhy Abdullah, whose daughter Mona, 7, died of Aids contracted at al-Fateh ChildrenÒs Hospital in Benghazi.

The death of an eight-year-old boy this week brought to 53 the total of deaths in an epidemic that is seen in Benghazi as a plot to kill Muslims.

However, Ali al-Hasnawi, the Justice Minister, said that there could be Óa complete revision of the caseÔ, which had already been tried once before and rejected on appeal. Diplomats see the sentences as a prelude to new contacts between Colonel Gaddafi and Western governments who are keen to keep his country within their fold. Last year the European Union opened the way to a compromise over the affair with a Benghazi action plan. This sent European doctors to the Mediterranean city to provide training and advice in setting up an HIV treatment centre. Most of the surviving children are being treated in hospitals in France and Italy at Colonel GaddafiÒs expense.

The six were part of a larger group of volunteers who went to al-Fateh hospital in 1998. In that year 426 children were confirmed as being HIV-positive. The following year, 19 of the foreigners were arrested, but 13 were later released.

In May 2004 the remaining six × Christiana Valcheva, Dr Alhajouj, Snezhana Dimitrova, 54, Alia Cherveniashka, 51, Nasya Nenova, 40 and Valentina Siropoulo, 47 × were sentenced to death by firing squad for Óundermining the security of the StateÔ.

The court ignored testimony from Professor Luc Montagnier × the French doctor who was a co-discoverer of HIV × that the virus was active in the hospital before the nurses began their contracts there.

Colonel Gaddafi fomented anti-foreigner feeling, saying that the CIA or the Israeli Mossad had designed a strain of killer virus and given it to the medical staff to experiment on Libyan children. Now the colonel is seen by experts as using the Benghazi Six as a pawn in his discussions over oil, arms and aircraft, and Middle Eastern diplomacy.

Twists and turns for the Benghazi Six

February 1999 19 Bulgarian health workers arrested on suspicion of spreading HIV

2000 Five Bulgarian nurses and two doctors × one Bulgarian, one Palestinian × go on trial

2001 Court calls for the death sentence

2002 Three of the accused retract confessions, saying they were given under duress

2003 French specialists testify that HIV was caused by poor hygiene

2004 Nurses and Palestinian doctor sentenced to death; Bulgarian doctor sentenced to four years in jail for currency smuggling. Bulgaria rejects Libyan offer to drop the case in exchange for $10 million for each infected child

2005 Ten Libyan officers accused of torturing the health workers acquitted

Source: agencies

Experts blame hospital hygiene
Mark Henderson, Science Editor

Research has always suggested that the infected children contracted HIV because of poor hygiene and sterilisation practices at al-Fateh hospital which predated the arrival of the health workers in Libya.

The case against the ÓBenghazi SixÔ was further weakened by a study published this month. A team led by Tulio de Oliveira of Oxford University used samples of HIV taken from infected children being treated in Europe to trace the genetic history of the viral subtype in their bodies.

As genetic mutations accumulate at a fixed rate, this can provide an accurate timescale for the outbreak, and the results showed that the HIV subtype was already infecting patients long before March 1998, when the accused staff arrived.

Oliver Pybus, a member of the Oxford team, said yesterday: ÓThere are just too many genetic differences between the infections for them to have all occurred since the arrival of the foreign medical staff × itÒs that clear.Ô

Further evidence that supports the medical workers has been compiled by Professor Luc Montagnier of the Pasteur Institute in Paris × who discovered HIV × and Vittorio Colizzi, of Tor Vergata University in Rome.

Their analysis of practices at al-Fateh hospital concluded that the outbreak probably began in April 1997 with a single child who was already infected with a sub-Saharan strain of HIV when admitted.

The virus then spread to other children because needles, catheters and other medical devices were not properly sterilised.

Many of the patients were also infected with hepatitis C, which is transmitted in the same way as HIV, pointing further towards poor hygiene as the likely origin of the outbreak.

* * *

The Times, London
December 20, 2006

Leading Articles
Hopes Dashed
Libya has missed its opportunity to engage with the outside world

The death sentence passed by a Libyan judge yesterday on five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of deliberately infecting 400 Libyan children with HIV is an outrage. The verdict, read out in a Tripoli courtroom at the end of a highly politicised retrial, confirms the original flawed verdict and has again been condemned by politicians, scientists and lawyers in Bulgaria and across the European Union. The charges were ludicrous × that the defendants infected the children with a genetically engineered virus while carrying out research for foreign intelligence agencies. The trial was a grotesque miscarriage of justice, with almost no account taken of the scientific evidence or the conclusive testimony of Aids experts. And the verdict, greeted with jubilation across Libya, is a blatant attempt to use the foreign nurses as a scapegoat for the failings and negligence in the Benghazi hospital where the children were infected.

The case has long been one of the main stumbling blocks preventing closer relations between Libya and the European Union. The first trial produced such an international outcry that the Supreme Court was persuaded last year to grant a retrial. This, however, was equally flawed. Research published this month said that samples from the infected children showed that their viral infections were contracted up to three years before the six started working at the hospital. Evidence that HIV was active in the hospital before their arrival was brushed aside in the trial, however, and no proper examination was made of how unhygienic conditions had allowed it to spread.

The Libyan leadership is well aware of the political sensitivities. The previous Prime Minister was negotiating with the EU on a face-saving solution involving an admission of guilt by Bulgaria, compensation of around È10 million for each infected childÒs family and an Aids research centre for Africa, to be built in Benghazi with European money. Bulgaria, however, has refused to pay compensation, saying that such Óblood moneyÔ implied an admission of guilt. The proposals for an Aids centre have not been agreed. And Libyan public opinion has been scandalised by the infections, which have already caused the deaths of about 50 children.

The Government has little room for manoeuvre. Overturning the court verdict would undercut all claims of judicial independence. It would also provoke fury in Benghazi, long a political and tribal rival of Tripoli. And it would appear to be another unpopular concession to Western political pressure. Diplomats, nevertheless, see the verdict as the start of a new round of bargaining. A further appeal will be made to the Supreme Court. As with Lockerbie, a deal may eventually be agreed × with the defendants kept in appalling conditions meanwhile as hostages.

The West had hoped that with the surrender of LibyaÒs weapons of mass destruction, the way was open for a swift normalisation of relations and an upsurge in investment and cultural exchange. Those early hopes have been disappointed. Libya is marking time. Bureaucracy, inertia and the cushion of oil money have thwarted most attempts at political and economic reform. Western frustration has been matched by unrealistic Libyan expectations and disillusion. This case shows that rehabilitation for Libya will be neither quick nor painless.

* * *

The Financial Times
December 20, 2006

Libya earns censure on HIV death sentences
By Heba Saleh in Cairo

A Libyan court decision yesterday to condemn to death five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor on charges of deliberately infecting hundreds of children with the HIV virus was greeted with widespread international condemnation.

The ruling at the end of a seven-month retrial - an appeal is allowed - is likely to complicate relations between Libya and the west after they had improved in recent years.

The European Commission described the sentence as "unacceptable", the US said it was "disappointed", while the Bulgarian authorities "categorically rejected" the ruling and called for international pressure on Libya.

But the court decision was hailed as a victory for justice by some of the families of the 427 children infected with the HIV virus in the Al Fateh hospital in the eastern city of Benghazi, where the foreign medics worked in the late 1990s.

The oil-rich north African country had made strides in shedding its image as an international pariah after its leader, Colonel Muammer Gadaffi, announced in 2003 that he would give up a programme to make weapons of mass destruction. He also agreed to pay massive compensation to the families of victims of the Lockerbie airline bombing in 1988 for which a Libyan agent was convicted by a Scottish court.

Franco Frattini, the European Union justice commissioner, said the Libyan court decision was "an obstacle to co-operation with the EU"."I can't imagine that these executions will take place," he said. "The Libyan leadership has the instruments to review this decision."

The Bulgarian authorities also called on the Libyan leadership to intervene at once. They said the trial was "completely warped" because it disregarded input from the international scientific community.

Experts have said they believe the outbreak was caused by poor hygiene standards at the hospital. Professor Luc Montagnier, a French doctor involved in first identifying the HIV virus, testified in Libya that the epidemic had started a year before the defendants came to work at the hospital in 1998.

The medics have been in custody for almost eight years. They were originally sentenced to death in May 2004 after an earlier trial, but that ruling was struck down a few months later and a retrial was ordered.

"I wouldn't regard it as clear in any way that the sentences will be carried out," said Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya.

"The underlying problem is that the perception of this inside Libya is different. There, it is not a problem of the foreign medics but of hundreds of children who will probably die. There is huge anger, added to the fact that they have just seen the Lockerbie victims compensated at a rate of $10m a head."

Libya had demanded $10m in compensation for each child but Bulgaria refused, saying it would amount to an admission of guilt.

* * *

The Independent
December 20, 2006

The Big Question: Why have five nurses and a doctor been condemned to death in Libya?
By Peter Popham

Why are we asking this question now?

Because yesterday the five Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor were, for the second time, sentenced to death by a Libyan court. The verdict was a carbon copy of that handed down by the court in the first trial in May 2004. The foreigners appealed to the Supreme Court and on Christmas Day 2005 the court accepted the appeal and ordered a retrial. The foreign health workers have now been in prison in Libya for nearly seven years, much of that time in degrading conditions. The trial has become by far the longest and most heavily politicised legal process in Libya's history.

What is their alleged crime?

Almost too horrible to describe: deliberately pumping HIV-infected blood into the veins of hundreds of small Libyan boys and girls. Fifty-two children have died since the epidemic began. Some of the surviving children have tuberculosis and other Aids-related diseases, though the condition of many of the others has stabilised thanks to anti-retroviral medication. Many of the children are being treated at hospitals in Italy and France thanks to funding from the EU.

Why are we calling it 'alleged'?

Because nobody outside Libya believes there is the slightest reason to think they are guilty. The nurses belonged to a larger group of Bulgarians who took up their contracts at Al-Fatih government hospital in Benghazi, Libya's second city, in March 1998. Then in February of the next year, 23 Bulgarians working at the hospital were arrested, six of whom, along with the Palestinian, were held incommunicado for months, while the rest were released.

Those held were initially charged with "committing actions leading to the uncontrolled murder of people with the aim of undermining state security" , in a plot that the Libyan authorities claimed had been dreamed up by the CIA and Mossad. The charge of which they were convicted yesterday was " deliberately causing an Aids epidemic by injecting over 400 children with harmful micro-organisms", which also carries the death penalty.

On what evidence were they convicted?

The only evidence against them is a report that was hurriedly compiled by five Libyan doctors and which contains no data, only anecdotes. The court refused to hear witnesses in defence of the medical staff, and rejected requests for new inquiries into the HIV outbreak. The report by Aids experts Luc Montagnier and Vittorio Colizzi submitted to the original trial, which indicated that the epidemic was caused by poor hygiene - needles washed under the tap - and began before the Bulgarians arrived, was discounted. A new report published in Nature last week indicates that the outbreak stemmed from a single HIV-positive child under treatment in the hospital who had been infected by his mother; the virus, the report claims, was already present in the hospital in 1997. But the court did not wish to know.

What do the nurses say?

One of the accused, Christiana Valcheva, told the court: "No doctor or nurse would dare commit such a dreadful crime."

All claim innocence, and insist that their confessions were tortured out of them. They brought a civil suit against their 10 alleged torturers, which was thrown out by a Tripoli court last year, and they were not allowed to appeal that verdict to the Supreme Court, nor to tell the new trial about what had happened to them. The nurses were once again obliged at the retrial to hear the confessions that had been extracted from them by beatings and electric shocks employed to send them to the firing squad.

Has the international community done much to help?

It has done quite a bit. The case is embarrassing all round because while in 1999, when it started, Libya was still an international pariah and nobody was surprised to hear Colonel Muammar Gaddafi making exotic allegations about CIA/Mossad conspiracies, since giving up the bomb in 2003 he has been making a ponderous return from the cold. This case has made the process more difficult.

Since the original guilty verdict, the Council of the European Union has invited Libya to join the Barcelona Process - the EU-funded initiative to bring its Mediterranean neighbours into a closer political, economic and cultural relationship, intended to culminate in a free-trade zone - in exchange for dropping the case against the Bulgarians.

In November 2004, the European Commission launched a Benghazi Aids Action Plan which has so far received È2m in EU money. Last year Colonel Gaddafi offered to drop the case on payment by Bulgaria of È10m for each infected child's family. Bulgaria rejected the proposal, but in December set up its own international fund to help Libya combat Aids.

And there is probably more going on behind the scenes: last Friday David Welch, an American Assistant Secretary of State who helped negotiate the resumption of diplomatic relations between Libya and the US, arrived in Tripoli to discuss "issues which hinder improvements in relations" , according to the Libyan news agency Jana. No details were released. Welch has previously called for the nurses to be allowed to go home, and yesterday Washington said it was "disappointed" with the trial verdict.

Why doesn't Gaddafi commute the sentences?

Benghazi is the centre of opposition to his dictatorial regime, and the Aids epidemic has become a focus of mass popular anger. The idea propagated by Colonel Gaddafi himself that the epidemic was caused by the Bulgarians acting on the orders of foreign intelligence agencies was repeated verbatim at a press conference in London on Monday by the president of a group representing the victims.

But if he is looking for a way of taking revenge on the West for the loss of face (and dollars) inflicted over the Lockerbie bombing, then the closer the Bulgarians get to the firing squad, the harder the bargain he will be able to drive. There are still two legal steps the foreigners can take before they run out of options, first the Supreme Court, second the so-called " high judicial council" described yesterday by Libya's justice minister Ali Hasnaoui as senior to the Supreme Court. Whatever those bodies may decide, the real horse-trading should be starting about now.

Will these health workers ever return home?

Yes...

* They will, if the European Union, which admits Bulgaria in January, is willing to foot a monstrous bill

* They will, if David Welch, the US Assistant Secretary of State, has a card up his sleeve that no one knows about

* They will, if Gaddaffi is adroit enough to be able to persuade the outraged mothers and fathers of Benghazi that the departure of the " murderers" of their children is other than a bitter defeat

No...

* They won't, if Gaddaffi considers that Libya is too important an ally to be discarded and the EU's bribes to be chicken feed

* They won't, if he fears the waning of his powers and does not dare hand a victory to his enemies in Benghazi

* They won't, If Gaddaffi does not give a fig for the Barcelona process, and decides that domestic political calculation outweighs any available gain on the international front.

Guardian
December 20, 2006

Travesty in Tripoli
Leader

Libya's criminal justice system does not normally attract much attention abroad, but the case of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor sentenced to death for allegedly infecting hundreds of children with the HIV virus is an extraordinary and troubling one. International condemnation yesterday was entirely justified after a travesty of a trial which ignored both the expert scientific opinion that discredited the charges, and credible claims that the defendants confessed after being tortured.

There have always been strong suspicions that these foreign medics were being made the scapegoats for Libyan failings. A French doctor testified that HIV had spread in Benghazi's Al-Fateh children's hospital long before the six began work there, and that the epidemic was probably caused by poor hygiene. Only last month more than 100 Nobel laureates called on Colonel Muammar Gadafy to guarantee a fair trial. The World Medical Association and the International Council of Nurses added their professional voices to the chorus that the firing squad is not the right end to this story.
The story is of course foremost a tragedy for the more than 50 Libyan children who have already died of Aids and the 370 other families who still face terrible uncertainty. But it is unfortunate that a group representing the victims claims the nurses infected the children at the bidding of foreign intelligence agencies. Libya's unfree press, persecution of dissidents and troubled relations with the west may go some way to explaining such a bizarre accusation. But this episode is all the more regrettable because those relations are changing fast.

In recent years Libya has been coming in from the cold. It ended its support for terrorism by surrendering the Lockerbie bombing suspects for trial and paying compensation to the relatives of its victims and to those killed in another attack on a French plane. In 2003 it surrendered the weapons of mass destruction it still had. Since then western leaders, including Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac, have beaten a path to Colonel Gadafy's tent door. The US is grateful for his help in fighting the "war on terror". This one-time pariah was feted in Brussels and the EU seeks his cooperation in controlling migration. His reformist son and heir apparent has studied in London. Oil and gas companies are investing heavily in Libya again.

Bulgaria's position has been strengthened by the coincidence that it is about to join the EU and can expect solidarity from fellow member states over this sordid affair. Condemnation of the trial should be a signal to Tripoli to drop the death sentences, discuss offers of financial assistance for the families - and prove that the new Libya fully respects the rule of law.

* * *

The New York Times
December 21, 2006

Editorial:
Libya's Continuing Legal Farce

If Libya really wants to repair its tattered relations with the West, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi will need to intervene to prevent a terrible miscarriage of justice. This week, a Libyan court condemned to death six foreign medical workers on the widely discredited charge that they deliberately infected hundreds of children with the virus that causes AIDS. It was the second time in this case that a Libyan court has made that judgment.

This can only be deemed a travesty given expert testimony - by no less an authority than Luc Montagnier, a co-discoverer of H.I.V. - that the outbreak started well before the five Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor had even arrived in Libya. The likely cause was an appalling lack of sanitary procedures at a hospital where the virus was spread, probably through contaminated needles or infected blood products. Patient records reportedly show that at least some of the children were infected either before or after the six foreign medical workers were on the scene.

With the case against the medical workers so flimsy, if not concocted, it is no wonder that more than 100 Nobel laureates and dozens of other eminent scientists have called for a new and fair trial. None of the exonerating evidence was even admitted in the latest trial.

Two factors seem to be driving these outrageously unfair verdicts. Libya is eager to deflect public outrage by blaming foreigners rather than the country's unsanitary hospitals. And the families of infected children, presumably egged on by the government, want to extract unwarranted compensation from the Bulgarian government or other donors - as much as USD 10 million per child, the amount Libya paid to each family of the victims killed in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

Lawyers for the condemned say they will appeal to Libya's Supreme Court, which quashed a previous death sentence. If the court fails to do so again, the children's families have the power under Libyan law to grant clemency in return for compensation. Colonel Qaddafi should urge them to stop trying to extort big money. An international fund has already been set up to provide medical care for the children and better equipment for the hospital.

* * *

Gulf News
December 25, 206

Libya plays power politics
By Patrick Seale, Special to Gulf News

By playing power politics with the fate of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, Colonel Muammar Al Gaddafi of Libya is providing the world with a further example of his Bedouin cunning, prickly national pride and apparent indifference to international public opinion.

The five nurses and the doctor arrived in Libya in February 1998 and went to work at the Al Fateh Children's Hospital in Benghazi, Libya's second city. Less than six months later, children at the hospital began testing positive for HIV, the virus that causes Aids.

The nurses and the doctor were accused of deliberately inocculating 426 children with the virus. Fifty-two children have since died. Many others are being treated abroad, including 150 in hospitals in France.

According to a Libyan intelligence report submitted to the court, the nurses confessed to the crime. One of the nurses, Kristiyana Vulcheva, was said to have confessed that she had been given vials of HIV-tainted blood by a British friend who was working for a subsidiary of the American firm Halliburton. Gaddafi charged that the nurses and the doctor had acted on orders from the CIA and Israel's intelligence agency Mossad.

Lawyers for the nurses said that the confessions had been extracted under torture. They said the nurses had been given electric shocks. One nurse, Snezhana Dimitrova, said she had been suspended from a door jam with her hands manacled behind her back until her shoulders dislocated.

Retrial

Incarcerated in Libya since February 1999, the five nurses and the doctor were condemned to death by firing squad by a Benghazi court in May 2004. The sentence was quashed by Libya's Supreme Court, which ordered a retrial in Tripoli. It was held from May to November this year. The six were again condemned to death on 19 December.

The courts seem to have paid no attention to the views of independent experts such as the distinguished French virologist, Dr Luc Montagnier - one of the co-discoverers of HIV - who concluded that the virus was present in the hospital before the arrival of the foreign health workers and that the infection was probably spread by unsanitary health conditions at the hospital and by the use of contaminated needles.

Dr Montagnier's conclusions were subsequently confirmed by two investigations by the well-known British journal, Nature.

Many international appeals have been made to Gaddafi on behalf of the five nurses and the doctor, notably by 114 Nobel Prize winners. But, at the time of writing, Gaddafi has remained unmoved. Further legal action is in prospect, suggesting that the case will drag on for months and perhaps years.

Bulgaria is due to join the European Union on January 1, 2007. It will then be in a position to call on all 27 EU member countries to put pressure on Libya to release the nurses. The European Union justice commissioner, Franco Frattini, has called on the Libyan authorities to rethink their handling of the case, calling it "an obstacle to cooperation with the European Union".

What is Gaddafi up to? One widely prevalent view is that he is seeking revenge for having been forced to pay USD 10 million to each family of the 270 people killed in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, for which Libya accepted responsibility.

Compensation

It is no accident that the families of the Libyan children have asked that Bulgaria or other donors pay USD 10 million compensation for each sick or dead child. In December 2005 an international fund was set up to cover medical care and other costs incurred by the families of the HIV-infected children. Under Libyan law, the children's families have the power to grant clemency in return for financial compensation.

Bulgaria's Foreign Minister, Ivailo Kalfin, has pledged that the fund will "provide lifelong medical treatment for the children", but the money collected so far is much less than the Libyan families are demanding.

It looks, therefore, as if the case is degenerating into a squalid haggle over money, with Gaddafi attempting to extort from the international community a sum equivalent to the one he was forced to pay to the families of the Lockerbie victims.

Another possible explanation is that Gaddafi has come under intense pressure to stand firm from the families who are convinced that their children are the victims of a foreign plot. Benghazi, where most of the families come from, is traditionally hostile to the government in Tripoli.

It is astonishing that, just at a time when Libya is opening up to the world after more than a decade of international isolation, it is now running the risk of damaging its international image by what seems to be a blatant miscarriage of justice.

In the last three years, Libya has been transformed from a "rogue state", under international sanctions, to a partner of the West, and especially of the United States. Tripoli is now bustling with foreign businessmen; air links have been restored; Libyan assets have been unfrozen; foreign investment is pouring into the oil industry. The country as a whole is enjoying a building boom.

But the tragic case of the Bulgarian nurses suggests that Libya's judiciary remains far from independent, that its hospitals are below standard and that the colonel, who has ruled Libya for the past 37 years, is far from ready to play according to international rules.

- Patrick Seale is a commentator and author of several books on Middle East affairs.

* * *

World Politics Watch
December 26, 2006

Libya's Benghazi Six Verdicts Draw Condemnation
Juliette Terzieff

World leaders reacted with outrage to a Libyan court's decision Dec. 19 to again sentence to death six medical workers charged with deliberately infecting of over 400 children with HIV. The continuing saga threatens to derail Moammar Qaddafi's delicately crafted attempts to re-engage with the international community.

Secretary of State Condolezza Rice said the United States was "very disappointed with the outcome" and would like to see the medical workers released and "allowed to go home at the earliest possible date." Russian Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called the decision "exceedingly cruel."

"I am shocked by this kind of decision. It's a negative message to the European Union," said Franco Frattini, the EU justice and security commissioner.

Lawyers for the six immediately appealed Tuesday's verdict to the Libyan Supreme Court, but it is not known when the court will rule. If the Supreme Court upholds the judgment, the case -- already almost eights years long -- would head for a final approval by Libya's Supreme Judicial Council.

"This case is completely political, and everyone watching it is still hoping for the possibility of a negotiated outcome," says Sarah Leah Whitson, New York-based Middle East and North Africa Director for Human Rights Watch. "It would be nothing less than a disaster for Libya politically if they execute."

A Flawed Case

The case of the Benghazi Six -- five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor -- began back in 1998 when children at the Al Fateh hospital in Benghazi, Libya, began testing positive for the HIV virus. Libyan authorities arrested dozens of Polish, Hungarian, Bulgarian and Filipino medical professionals, eventually releasing all but the six.

Libyan authorities subsequently cited forced confessions elicited from the medics under torture as proof of a Western conspiracy to test HIV as a biological weapon. Qaddafi alleged the medics were working on orders from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the Mossad, Israel's intelligence outfit.

The Benghazi court sentenced the six to death by firing squad in May 2004, setting off a storm of criticism over the legality of the trial.

Negotiations between Libya, Bulgaria, the United States and European Union to find a way forward resulted in the creation of a fund to provide medical treatment for the infected children and paved the way for a retrial.

But observers charge the retrial was as flawed as the first, with the court refusing to hear testimony for the defense or listen to defendants' recollections of torture and coerced confessions. The court also failed to produce scientific evidence to support its decision.

Last month, shortly after the second trial closed, the medical journal Nature published research results showing that samples taken from some of the children contained viral strains that were circulating at the hospital long before the medics arrived in 1998.

As the case has dragged on, more than 50 of the children have died.

Political Miscalculation

The continuing suffering and death of so many children has left high emotions in its wake across Libya and, say observers, unleashed a political storm Qaddafi may not have foreseen.

Having played up the case in domestic media as one of diabolically criminal Western intentions to control African people, releasing the six now would appear as capitulation to the West. Observers believe it could also embolden opposition to Qaddafi's long rule, especially in Benghazi, which has long been home to anti-Qaddafi political sentiment. Their release also would bring an end to Qaddafi's contention that foreigners, not unsanitary practices, are to blame for the infections.

"Qaddafi miscalculated. He expected to use this case as political leverage against the West, not to have it used against him domestically," Whitson said.

Bulgaria was slow to react to the case, apparently mindful of its economic relations with Libya. Qaddafi's kingdom has been a large client for Bulgarian arms production and over 25,000 Bulgarians work as guest workers there, earning salaries triple what could be earned at home.

But Bulgaria's shock at the 2004 guilty verdict changed the two countries' relations, as Bulgarian authorities began an international campaign to win support for the medics.

Bulgaria is scheduled to join the European Union on Jan. 1, meaning Libya must now contend with one of the world's political and economic powerhouses, not only with a small Balkan nation of limited international influence.

While the EU has yet to take any official steps against Libya, spokesman Johannes Laitenberger said the bloc has not ruled out punitive action.

The United States recently restored diplomatic ties with the North African nation, re-opening its Tripoli Embassy, but Rice has quashed speculation about an official visit, and American officials have quietly hinted the case may dampen future prospects for bilateral relations. If the United States feels Libya is reneging on its commitments to honor international agreements and pursue reform, efforts to normalize relations could be halted, further straining Qaddafi's economically challenged regime.

Looking For a Way Out

Given the politicized nature of the case, observers believe, a negotiated settlement looks like the most likely way forward.

Libya has asked Bulgaria to provide USD 10 million per child in exchange for the release of the medics. Under Libyan law, families of the victims have the power to grant clemency. But Bulgaria has balked at the offer on the grounds such a deal would imply guilt.

Other possibilities for satisfying Libya's demands have surfaced. EU representatives signed a Bulgaria-initiated project agreement in September that calls for the construction of a large clinic in Benghazi for the treatment of young HIV/AIDS patients. The project is to be financed by Bulgaria and other European nations. Training for Libyan medical professionals on how to treat HIV/AIDS patients also has begun.

While the projects are a start, few believe they will be enough to secure release of the Benghazi six, and real negotiations cannot begin until the Libyan judicial process has run its course.

* * *

Reuters
December 29, 2006

Libya's Gaddafi suggests spy link in HIV case

TRIPOLI, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on Friday defended a court's decision to sentence five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death for infecting more than 400 children with HIV, but said mystery surrounded the case.

"It is unimportant that the medics are sentenced to death or not -- if they committed a crime and are sentenced to death, that is the court's decision," Gaddafi told a gathering of officials, religious leaders and reporters in Tripoli.

"The important thing is why the medical team injected the children with AIDS. Who ordered you -- was it Libyan intelligence, American intelligence, Israeli intelligence or
Bulgarian intelligence? This is what we have to find out."

The medics were sentenced last week for deliberately infecting the children with the virus that causes AIDS at a Benghazi hospital in the late 1990s. More than 50 of the
children have since died.

Condemnation poured in from Western governments and rights groups, with Bulgaria, the EU which it joins next month and Amnesty International among the swiftest critics. Washington said it was disappointed.

Some Western scientists say negligence and poor hospital hygiene are the real culprits and the six are scapegoats, but in Libya the verdict came as a welcome act of defiance of the West.

On Thursday, Libya's Foreign Ministry said western criticism of the death sentences showed a lack of respect for Libya.

It defended the ruling and said outside pressure to overturn the sentences created a dangerous precedent in which Libyans are considered "sub-human" and treated differently to Bulgarians.

Gaddafi contrasted the international outcry over the HIV case with that of Libyan Abdel Basset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi, who was found guilty in 2001 of the Pan Am plane bombing over Scotland and handed a mandatory life prison sentence.

Tripoli has agreed to pay USD 2.7 billion to the families of the crash victims and taken responsibility for the bombing.

"Organisations like the Arab League, the non-aligned movement and the Islamic Conference said al-Megrahi was a political prisoner and international observers said elements of foreign intelligence were present at the trial," Gaddafi said.

"Nobody asked for his release."

* * *

Jana News Agency
December 31, 2006

Speech of the Leader of the Revolution at the Meeting with Heads of Churches, Ambassadors of Sisterly and Friendly Countries and Cultural, Political and Religious Activists of the Libyan People
[...]

Unfortunately such happy occasions which combine several festivities have nothing to do with Palestine, Iraq and there is also Abdel Basset Al Megrahi, the Bulgarian nurses, Saddam Hussein and all these tragedies. We have a lot of disasters in front of us.

On this happy occasion look at what is going on throughout the world, in Palestine, Iraq and there is Abdel Basset Al Megrahi, the Bulgarian nurses, Saddam Hussein, Afghanistan - all these are disasters which we can't ignore. On the other hand they are saying we should not interfere in the courts of law. If we have a mercenary agent who betrays his country and works for the colonialists and was discovered and sentenced to prison or to death they say you don't respect the rule of law. You interfere in the verdict. You did not let the court rule. If we let the courts rule they will say you have to intervene in the verdict and you have to change the sentence. The Bulgarian nurses are innocent and you have to release them quickly.

Then why in the first place did you say the rule of law must prevail and the court verdict has to be binding. Therefore the dealings are confused and there is no clear way for dealings. and this is a very bitter aspect.

How can the nurses and the doctors who are angels of mercy do such things? How could they deliberately do such things? This is the case and this is the first time I speak about it. What matters here is not whether to sentence to death or not to sentence to death. If somebody committed a crime punishable by death then this is the law. The court has to rule as such. What matters is that we want to know why they have deliberately infected the children with aids. Nobody answered us. Nobody came to tell us anything. We don't know whether that was a conspiracy by Libyan intelligence, American intelligence or even Israeli intelligence or whether it is Bulgarian or Indian. We have to know all this. And if it is proven the nurses causes the infection with the aids virus , if they did it deliberately then it goes without saying that the penalty is death whatever their nationality.

We have to know in the interests of whom did the nurses and doctor act in order to kill 400 children We have to know whose interest was served. They have to answer us. This is very important because such an affair may be repeated sometime later on.
Abdul Basset Al Megrahi's lawyers made an injunction in the sentence. A number of international observers who were present in the court said there are elements of intelligence of that state owning the airliner where most of the victims came. This means the court was false. All international organisations, including the non-aligned movement, the Arab League, the OIC, the UN etc said Abdel Basset is a political hostage and is not a convict. International observers also said that foreign intelligence agents were in the court and they were whispering to the judges therefore the court is objectionable. And despite this nobody said Abdel Basset is to be released. They said the court has ruled and we have to accept the ruling and keep silent. People should say the matter is over because the court in Benghazi issued its verdict. We also say to the Scottish court you have to release Abdel Basset. In fact there are rotten standards. How could various states engage in friendship, co-operation and peace if the dealings are in accordance with such rotten standards and such double standards are practised?

Those who deceive the world say they established a fund for the compensation of families and the treatment of children. All this is false because the fund is empty. We have to expose those countries which claim to have established a fund with money for the treatment of children. All this is rubbish, There is no fund and no state and no company offered any money.

Financial Times
January 2, 2007

Bulgaria looks to EU indrive to free Libya nurses
By Christopher Condon in Bucharest and Andrew Bounds in, Brussels

Bulgarians are expecting an immediate dividend from membership of the European Union as their government launches a new push to free five nurses sentenced to death by a Libyan court last week.

The nurses' plight has become a cause celebre in the Balkan country, with some analysts seeing it as an early test of how seriously the country is regarded by its new peers in the EU.

Bulgaria, along with neighbouring Romania, celebrated its historic entry into the EU at the same time it rang in the New Year, midnight on Sunday. But while the Balkan duo will be under considerable pressure to deliver on promises to continue crucial reforms, Sofia is demanding that Europe show its loyalty by helping to free the nurses.

Many Bulgarians believe Brussels has not yet put its full diplomatic weight behind the efforts. The five nurses, along with a Palestinian doctor, were sentenced to death on December 19 for deliberately infecting 426 children with HIV in 1999. The sentenced have maintained their innocence.

Medical experts have testified that the children were infected with HIV before the six accused ever had contact with them, but Tripoli claims that the children, 50 of whom have died, were injected with HIV in a botched attempt to find a cure for Aids.

Bulgaria's media has staged a mass campaign to raise awareness of the case and demand a more aggressive stance from Brussels, including threats of sanctions against Libya.

The cause has been quickly embraced by Bulgaria's public. The vast majority of those joining in Sunday evening's outdoor celebrations in Sofia wore lapel ribbons signifying their support for the nurses.

During the festivities in Sofia's Batenberg square, Sergey Stanishev, Bulgaria's prime minister, received heavy and sustained app-lause when he raised the issue. "We will go on fighting for the release of the nurses and we will then celebrate together with them," he said.

Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the EU's external relations commissioner, says she is doing all she can. She visited the victims' families in 2005 and has helped set up a charitable fund to care for them in an attempt to win over Libyan public opinion. Last week she wrote to Abdelati al-Ebaidi, Tripoli's senior official for European affairs, saying she hoped the government would reconsider. The EU has also invested millions in the hospital in Benghazi where the infections allegedly occurred.

"We have done this on humanitarian grounds but also in full knowledge that Bulgaria would be joining the EU. The actual fact of admission does not make a big difference," Ms Ferrero-Waldner's spokeswoman said.

Muammar Gadaffi, Libya's leader, has asked for EUR 10m (USD 13.2m, GBP 6.7m) in compensation for each of the children's families, apparently in return for the sentences to be commuted. Bulgaria has rejected the offer, saying it would constitute an admission of guilt.

Sanctions are unlikely as the west is seeking to bring the mercurial dictator in from the cold. His country is a crucial ally in stopping illegal migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean.

* * *

Nature
January 4, 2007

Libya and human values
Editorial

Death sentences issued by a Libyan court highlight more than one type of injustice.

The huge international outcry that followed last month's unjust decision by a Libyan judge to sentence six health professionals to death is hardly surprising. The charge that they deliberately infected more than 400 children with HIV in 1998 was baseless. The authorities ignored a body of evidence demonstrating that the cause of the outbreak was the use of contaminated medical material in the hospital in Benghazi, and that many of the children were infected long before the medics even began working at the hospital.

Libya has responded vigorously to the international community's reassertion that it should ensure a fair and impartial trial, and for scientific evidence to be taken in account. Its foreign ministry has denounced Western political interference as creating a dangerous precedent in which Libyans are considered "sub-human" and treated differently from Bulgarians. It added that the political stance expressed by the Bulgarian government, European Union countries and others shows "a clear bias to certain values that are likely to trigger wars, conflicts and cause enmity between religions and civilizations".

It would be too simplistic to dismiss this entirely as anti-Western rhetoric. There is understandable resentment in many parts of the world that powerful nations are selective and inconsistent in their application of human rights. But the attention attracted by the Libyan scandal has been largely fuelled by the social conscience of what can in such instances be justifiably called the international scientific community Ч a force that is largely apolitical. It has a long track record in defending individuals on trial in human-rights cases, and has helped Arab and other scientists who have suffered travel restrictions to the United States (see Nature 443, 605Ц606;2006 doi:10.1038/443605b). It has also been relatively even-handed in its struggle to champion science as a rational means of establishing truth, and has consistently attacked the abuse of science for political ends wherever this occurs.

The case of the health professionals is an eminently scientific one, and the protests of the global scientific community are a defence not of Western values, but of universal and fundamental values, including the basic right to a fair and impartial trial, and to be allowed to present all the evidence. These are values to which Libya itself subscribes, having signed many international human-rights treaties.

But the Libyan case also involves other values. The first is the humanitarian value of alleviating the tragedy of the infected children. An international fund has been set up to help treat the children in European hospitals, and to strengthen Libya's expertise in dealing with HIV. The international community should continue to strengthen these efforts as part of its solidarity with both the Libyan people and the affected families.

The unfortunate politicization of this case has also diverted attention from another value: the right to safe health care. The transmission of HIV in medical settings in many countries is a large but often 'invisible' problem that is only heard about when it reaches the scale of the Benghazi outbreak, or one in Kazakhstan last summer in which almost 100 children were infected with HIV. There is no internationally recognized set of precautions to make procedures safer, and many nations lack adequate medical supplies and must risk re-using them.

The scientific community, faced with the injustice of the Libyan trial, has acted resolutely. But it must do more to press home the less immediately compelling but equally tragic battlegrounds that the Libyan case highlights in the fight against HIV.

* * *

Nature
January 4, 2007verdict

Europe condemns Libyan trial
Declan Butler

Death sentence for medics sparks outrage.

Bulgaria's accession to the European Union (EU) on 1 January will allow it to apply ever-greater international pressure in the political row over the fate of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor condemned to death in Libya last month.

The six medical workers were sentenced to death on 19 December by the Benghazi Criminal Court for deliberately infecting more than 400 children with HIV at the Al-Fateh Hospital in Benghazi in 1998. Scientists around the world have argued that medical evidence shows unequivocally that the people were not infected deliberately. They point out that the outbreak was a typical example of what can go wrong when hospital equipment and supplies become contaminated Ч as happened in a hospital in Kazakhstan, where more than 80 children were infected with HIV last summer.

The team defending the medical workers says that it will appeal the verdict to the Supreme Court in Libya. By law, this must be done within 60 days of the verdict. The Supreme Council for Judicial Authority could also annul the death sentences. The council, which makes judicial appointments, is an interface between Libya's supposedly separated executive and judiciary authorities.

Although the strongest criticism of the verdict came from Bulgaria itself, both the EU and Germany, which holds the EU's presidency for the first half of 2007, forcefully condemned the sentences. Bulgaria's new status as an EU member state seems to ensure that this pressure will not slacken.

"We simply cannot accept this verdict," says Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the European Commission's foreign minister. In a letter to the Libyan foreign ministry she pointed to the "recent publication of a strong body of scientific evidence concerning the origin and timing of the Benghazi infection...I very much regret that this new element was not deemed worth considering in the legal proceedings thus far and hope it will be duly taken into consideration by the Supreme Court."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned the verdict as a "terrible ruling"; Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany's foreign minister, said that the EU would "continue to exert pressure under the German presidency so that Libya doesn't only take part in a solution but ultimately brings about a solution". This toughened attitude contrasts sharply with that shown by the United States. President George Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed only "disappointment", and have avoided any discussion of a fair trial or the need for scientific evidence to be taken into account.

The EU's direct language raises the stakes in the power play that surrounds the case. Until now, the international community's approach has mostly been one of 'silent diplomacy' Ч refraining from public criticism of Libya's handling of the case and relying on behind-the-scenes discussions. These interventions have centred on providing humanitarian aid, which might be seen as compensation (and thus a mitigating factor in Islamic law), while trying not to undercut the medical workers' defence with any implication of guilt and atonement. All the affected Libyan children are being treated in European hospitals.

The death sentences mark the failure of this approach, says Emmanual Altit, the French human-rights lawyer who heads the international defence team. Altit has long criticized the politicization of the case, arguing that it acts against the interests of the six medical workers by making them a bargaining chip in Libya's relations with the West.

Now that the political outcry has become noisier, it has been met with anger from Libya. Said Hafyana, the deputy secretary for external relations and international cooperation in Libya's General People's Committee, told Bulgaria's ambassador to Libya that: "No party, no country or authority has the right to intervene in the running of the Libyan justice system or to challenge its equity or fairness." Libyan state-controlled media have also orchestrated a campaign trying to equate the questioning of the guilt of the health workers with indifference to the plight of the children. Some allege that critics are part of a Western conspiracy. "Is the blood of our children mere sewer water?" asked the El Jamahiriya newspaper.

When the six medical workers were arrested in 1999, the country's leader Colonel Gaddafi stoked up sentiments such as these by alleging that the infection was a plot by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Israel's intelligence agency the Mossad to destabilize the country. Since then, Libya's geopolitical position has changed. After it abandoned the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction in 2003, providing the West with intelligence on nuclear proliferation, the once-rogue state came to be seen as a partner in the 'war on terror'. When diplomatic ties with the United States and the EU were subsequently re-established and trade sanctions lifted, business from America and other nations flocked to the country, which has substantial untapped oil reserves.

The United States is expected to appoint an ambassador to Libya in the coming months, and a visit by Rice seems likely. Sean McCormack, the official spokesman for the US Department of State, says that the verdict itself would not block such moves, and is only one of many considerations. The United States does not intend to take sides in the case, he adds.

Libya's leadership now has greater incentive than ever to avoid diplomatic ructions; but there is substantial resistance to being seen as capitulating to pressure from the West. Gaddafi dug in his heels on 29 December by rejecting calls to release the medical team, and reasserting that intelligence agencies were behind the crime.

According to diplomatic sources, the most optimistic outcome for the moment is that the six medical workers will remain condemned, but that a political solution will be found to have them freed. But the situation is increasingly volatile Ч and for the moment they remain in grave danger.

* * *

Financial Times
January 5, 2007

Obstacles remain to lifting Libya death sentence on nurses
By Daniel Dombey in London and Heba Saleh in Cairo

Europe faces stiff obstacles in its attempt to strike a deal with Libya over the lives of five Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death and the fate of hundreds of children with HIV, according to diplomats and analysts.

In spite of hopes of a settlement, the European Union's negotiating position is weakened by Libya's pivotal role in efforts to restrict immigration from Africa to southern Europe.

The Libyan government has estimated that the country hosts between 1m and 1.2m illegal immigrants, many thousands of whom try to reach Europe, principally through Italy.

At a time of mounting concern about Europe's security of energy supply, the EU is also hoping to begin discussions on increasing co-operation with Libya over its oil and gas resources.

"The EU is not in a position to exert effective pressure," said Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya and now deputy chairman of the Libya British Business Council. "The idea that if you kick Libya hard enough it would do what you want it to do is wrong."

Libyan judges have now twice found the nurses, and a Palestinian doctor, guilty of infecting more than 400 children in the city of Benghazi with HIV and have twice sentenced them to death, most recently last month. More than 50 of the children have died.

Many international ex-perts contend that the infections, which occurred in 1998, reflected poor sanitary conditions in the hospital rather than any deliberate act by the international medical staff.

But outrage in Bulgaria and calls in the Bulgarian media for a boycott on Libya have had little impact on the rest of the EU.

"Our position with Libya will not be changing because of this ruling," said a spokesman for the British Foreign Office, highlighting that the verdict is still due to be scrutinised by two higher judicial bodies.

Libya has already come in from the cold as a result of its decisions to give up its weapons of mass destruction programme and to provide compensation for victims of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

The country resists attempts to impugn its medical infrastructure and judicial process and the government is reluctant to break ranks with the families of the infected children. Benghazi has traditionally been a centre of opposition to Muammer Gadaffi, Libya's leader, and was the place of riots last year.

"We had thought there was going to be an agreement last year," said one EU official, referring to hopes raised after December 2005, when Libya's Supreme Court cancelled an initial death sentence. "But with Bulgaria in the EU [from January 1], perhaps the calculation is that the lives of the nurses are now worth more."

The European Commission has provided EUR 2m (USD 2.2m, GBP 1.35m) for the HIV victims, and has earmarked a further EUR 500,000, announced just before last month's court ruling. But earlier discussions between Tripoli, Bulgaria, the EU and the US revolved around much higher payments. The families have asked for payments of USD 10m per child, the same amount Libya paid the families of the Lockerbie victims.

EU governments are continuing informal contacts with Tripoli and officials say they still have reasonable expectations that an understanding will be reached.

* * *

Associated Press
December 21, 2006

Bush disappointed by Libyan death ruling (AP)

WASHINGTON - President Bush told Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov on Thursday that he was disappointed with a Libyan court decision to reimpose the death sentences on Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of infecting Libyan children with HIV.
Bush spoke with Parvanov on the phone from the White House about the Libyan decision, expressing his strong support for Bulgaria's efforts to secure the release of the medics, said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council.
The president also congratulated Parvanov on Bulgaria's accession as a member of the European Union, which will formally take place on Jan. 1.
Death sentences handed down Tuesday in Libya for five Bulgarian nurses accused of deliberately infecting 400 children with HIV triggered outrage Wednesday in Bulgaria. A court in Tripoli on Tuesday convicted the nurses and a Palestinian doctor and sentenced them to death, despite scientific evidence the youngsters had the virus before the medical workers arrived in Libya.
The six have been in jail since 1999 on charges that they intentionally spread the HIV virus to more than 400 children at a hospital in the city of Benghazi during a botched experiment to find a cure for AIDS. Fifty of the children died.
Bulgaria and European officials have blamed the infections on unhygienic practices at the hospital, and accuse Libya of making the accused scapegoats to cover up poor conditions. Libyan investigators told the court that infections were limited to the part of the hospital where the Bulgarian nurses had worked.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said after Tuesday's ruling that the United States was "very disappointed with the outcome" and urged the medical workers be freed and allowed to go home at the earliest possible date. The European Union said it was shocked by the verdict. Spokesman Johannes Laitenberger said the EU had not yet decided to take steps against Libya while the ruling is appealed.

* * *

Reuters
January 21, 2007

Libya says rejects "unfair" EU stance on nurses
By Salah Sarrar

TRIPOLI, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Libya will not agree to "unfair" European demands that it free six medics sentenced to death for infecting hundreds of children with HIV because this would mean interfering in the judiciary, Libya's foreign minister said.
"The independence of the Libyan judicial system is a red line, being part of our independence and sovereignty, and we can never accept interference in its affairs," said Foreign Liaison and International Cooperation Minister Mohammed Abdel-Rahman Shalgam.
"No one in Libya can interfere in the work of the judicial system, not even the Leader of the Revolution himself," Shalgam, speaking to the Libyan General Peoples Congress or parliament, said on Saturday in reference to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
The European parliament urged EU states on Thursday to review ties with the oil-rich north African country and step up pressure to secure the early release of the five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor.
The six were found guilty in December of deliberately starting an HIV outbreak at a hospital in Benghazi in eastern Libya. Over 430 children were infected and at least 50 have died.
The death sentences were condemned by Western governments and rights groups, with Bulgaria, which joined the EU this month, among the harshest critics.
The six have appealed to the Supreme Court, and a ruling is expected in the next few weeks.
"The stances of some European countries, regarding the court's ruling in this case, are unfair," said Shalgam, whose remarks were broadcast on national television.
"On the one hand, they (European countries) request the transparency and fairness of the judiciary, but when they see the fairness and transparency of judiciary, they demand the state's interference in the work of judiciary," he said.
"Libya has made contacts with regional and international organizations, being a member of these organisations, to take a stand in facing this European unjust stance," he said without elaborating.
Shalgam noted in his speech that the sentences were not the last word in the case, with a decision by the Supreme Court still to come, then another by the High Judicial Council, a body chaired by the justice minister.
"The High Judicial Council alone is the one to ratify the court's rulings," Shalgam said.
Some Western scientists blame negligence and poor hospital hygiene for the HIV outbreak and say the medics are scapegoats.
But in Libya the case has aroused much popular anger and the verdict was seen as a welcome act of defiance of the West.

* * *

Associated Press
January 20, 2007

Gadhafi's son warns Europe not to politicize AIDS case against jailed Bulgarian nurses
By KHALED EL-DEEB, Associated Press Writer

TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) - The son of Libyan leader Moammer Gadhafi on Saturday warned European Parliament members against politicizing the case of five Bulgarian nurses, who were convicted of infecting Libyan children with HIV and sentenced to death last month.
The warning from Seif al-Islam Gadhafi came in response to threats made by the European Commission that Libyan-European relations would be harmed if the Bulgarian nurses were executed.
"Pressures by Europeans on Libya will have a negative impact on the situation of the nurses and the Palestinian doctor and will take the case out of its legal and judiciary context to the political arena," the younger Gadhafi said in the statement issued by the Gadhafi International Association for Charitable Organizations,which he heads.
He also cautioned that European pressures would "hinder efforts exerted in several directions to reach a just solution and complete settlement for this issue." He did not elaborate.
À court in Tripoli last month convicted the nurses and a Palestinian doctor of intentionally infecting 400 Libyan children at a hospital and sentenced the six to death.
Fifty children have died, and the rest have been treated in Europe.
Bulgaria, which joined the EU in January, has blamed the infections on unhygienic practices at the hospital and accused Libya of making the medical workers scapegoats.
Research published also said samples from the infected children showed their viruses were contracted before the six defendants started working at the hospital.
Òhe six - who have been in Libyan custody since 1999 - now plan to appeal their convictions and sentences to Libya's Supreme Court.
Libya's prosecution of the nurses has become a bone of contention in the country's efforts to rebuild ties with the West. Europe and the United States have called for the six medical workers' release, indicating that future relations with Libya would be affected by the verdict.

* * *

Stratfor
January 29, 2007

Libya: Setting the Stage for an Energy Renaissance

Summary

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's son has signaled that his father is backing down in a conflict with the European Union. A diplomatic breakthrough -- and a European investment boom into Libyan energy -- is nigh.

Analysis

Saif al-Islam, son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, said in an interview published Jan. 29 that the Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death in Libya for allegedly infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV will not be executed. Their trial and the preceding investigation, he said, were "flawed" and "unfair." The interview, with Bulgarian newspaper 24 Chasa, breaks an eight-year-old diplomatic impasse -- and sets the stage for a Libyan energy renaissance.

The nurses in question have been detained in Libya since the original charges were leveled in 1999. The prosecution's case, however, is dubious at best. International investigators and HIV experts assert that the HIV epidemic where the nurses were staying was in progress before the nurses even arrived, and in his statements al-Islam himself noted that the HIV cases were caused by "negligence" and not "conspiracy."

Gadhafi has been beating the drum on this case for years in an effort to solidify popular support for the regime. However, if his son's words are true -- and al-Islam often acts as an effective go-between for his father and the wider world -- Gadhafi himself is now stating his opposition to executing the nurses.

The reason for the change of heart on such a long-standing issue is simple. On Jan. 1 Bulgaria acceded to the European Union. One of the bloc's organizational quirks is that all members have full veto power over all foreign policy decisions. While before Gadhafi could afford to bully Sofia in the interests of generating rhetoric for public consumption, an enraged Sofia now has the means, motive and opportunity to veto EU-wide investment, trade and aid deals with Tripoli. Considering these new circumstances, Stratfor expects this misunderstanding to be tidied up and the nurses to be sent home within a few weeks.

The implications for Libya could not be more significant. Oil output in Libya has fallen steadily since Gadhafi took power in the 1970s, making a mix of policy choices -- including mass nationalizations and sponsorship of terrorism -- that caused Libya's energy industry to suffer from insufficient investment, outdated technology and international sanctions. In recent years Gadhafi has largely made his peace with the international community -- the Bulgarian nurses dispute is the final outstanding issue -- and the country now stands on the cusp of a massive inflow of foreign investment.

The Libyans are reserving most of the existing projects for the Americans, believing they would be better partners since these were projects the Americans built before they fell out with Tripoli. But this hardly means the Europeans will be left with slim pickings, just that they will need to launch fundamentally new greenfield investments. That should not be a problem: Some 85 percent of the Libyan Desert has not yet been explored, while only test production is going on in the Gulf of Sidra behind the once-infamous "Line of Death."

But the real juicy stuff the Europeans cannot wait to get their hands on is the natural gas. Recent developments in Russian-European relations have pushed the Europeans to look for alternate suppliers of the fuel. Aside from politically problematic Iran, Libya really is the only other potential supplier capable of getting a large amount of natural gas -- piped and liquefied -- to the European market in a reasonable amount of time. That is, assuming those nurses make it home -- and soon.

* * *

Reuters
February 1, 2007

Qaeda figure slams Libya for softening line on nurses case

DUBAI, Feb 1 (Reuters) - A top al Qaeda militant labelled Libya's leadership "hateful infidels" over signs it may review the case of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor sentenced to death, according to a Web video posted on Thursday.

"(Libya wants) to cajole the West and please its masters Å by dropping the case of this heinous crime," Abu Yahya al-Libi, believed to be an al Qaeda militant from Libya who escaped from a U.S. jail in Afghanistan in 2005, said in the video.

"It is time for people to recognise these hateful infidels for what they are ... and not be fooled by their slogans," said Libi, denouncing Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi as a "tyrant".

Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said on Tuesday he had appealed to Gaddafi to spare the lives of the six health workers sentenced to death for infecting hundreds of children with HIV, and that Gaddafi had said he would think about the matter.
The death sentences were condemned by Western governments and rights groups. Some Western medical experts say negligence and poor hospital hygiene were responsible for the outbreak.

Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam earlier told a newspaper Libya would not execute the six and that a solution would be found.

The video, the latest of a series featuring Libi, showed the bearded militant wearing camouflage fatigues and sitting next to an assault rifle. It was produced by al Qaeda's media arm al-Sahab and posted on Web sites often used by Islamists.

Libi blasted Western countries for opposing the verdict.

"The case of the AIDS children is not the first in which the West uses double standards ... Whenever the victim is a Muslim, this has been the most distinctive feature of their policies," said Libi, whose real name is believed to be Mohammad Hassan.

* * *

Stratfor
January 29, 2007

Libya: Setting the Stage for an Energy Renaissance

Summary

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's son has signaled that his father is backing down in a conflict with the European Union. A diplomatic breakthrough -- and a European investment boom into Libyan energy -- is nigh.

Analysis

Saif al-Islam, son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, said in an interview published Jan. 29 that the Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death in Libya for allegedly infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV will not be executed. Their trial and the preceding investigation, he said, were "flawed" and "unfair." The interview, with Bulgarian newspaper 24 Chasa, breaks an eight-year-old diplomatic impasse -- and sets the stage for a Libyan energy renaissance.

The nurses in question have been detained in Libya since the original charges were leveled in 1999. The prosecution's case, however, is dubious at best. International investigators and HIV experts assert that the HIV epidemic where the nurses were staying was in progress before the nurses even arrived, and in his statements al-Islam himself noted that the HIV cases were caused by "negligence" and not "conspiracy."

Gadhafi has been beating the drum on this case for years in an effort to solidify popular support for the regime. However, if his son's words are true -- and al-Islam often acts as an effective go-between for his father and the wider world -- Gadhafi himself is now stating his opposition to executing the nurses.

The reason for the change of heart on such a long-standing issue is simple. On Jan. 1 Bulgaria acceded to the European Union. One of the bloc's organizational quirks is that all members have full veto power over all foreign policy decisions. While before Gadhafi could afford to bully Sofia in the interests of generating rhetoric for public consumption, an enraged Sofia now has the means, motive and opportunity to veto EU-wide investment, trade and aid deals with Tripoli. Considering these new circumstances, Stratfor expects this misunderstanding to be tidied up and the nurses to be sent home within a few weeks.

The implications for Libya could not be more significant. Oil output in Libya has fallen steadily since Gadhafi took power in the 1970s, making a mix of policy choices -- including mass nationalizations and sponsorship of terrorism -- that caused Libya's energy industry to suffer from insufficient investment, outdated technology and international sanctions. In recent years Gadhafi has largely made his peace with the international community -- the Bulgarian nurses dispute is the final outstanding issue -- and the country now stands on the cusp of a massive inflow of foreign investment.

The Libyans are reserving most of the existing projects for the Americans, believing they would be better partners since these were projects the Americans built before they fell out with Tripoli. But this hardly means the Europeans will be left with slim pickings, just that they will need to launch fundamentally new greenfield investments. That should not be a problem: Some 85 percent of the Libyan Desert has not yet been explored, while only test production is going on in the Gulf of Sidra behind the once-infamous "Line of Death."

But the real juicy stuff the Europeans cannot wait to get their hands on is the natural gas. Recent developments in Russian-European relations have pushed the Europeans to look for alternate suppliers of the fuel. Aside from politically problematic Iran, Libya really is the only other potential supplier capable of getting a large amount of natural gas -- piped and liquefied -- to the European market in a reasonable amount of time. That is, assuming those nurses make it home -- and soon.

* * *

Reuters
February 1, 2007

Qaeda figure slams Libya for softening line on nurses case

DUBAI, Feb 1 (Reuters) - A top al Qaeda militant labelled Libya's leadership "hateful infidels" over signs it may review the case of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor sentenced to death, according to a Web video posted on Thursday.

"(Libya wants) to cajole the West and please its masters Å by dropping the case of this heinous crime," Abu Yahya al-Libi, believed to be an al Qaeda militant from Libya who escaped from a U.S. jail in Afghanistan in 2005, said in the video.

"It is time for people to recognise these hateful infidels for what they are ... and not be fooled by their slogans," said Libi, denouncing Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi as a "tyrant".

Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said on Tuesday he had appealed to Gaddafi to spare the lives of the six health workers sentenced to death for infecting hundreds of children with HIV, and that Gaddafi had said he would think about the matter.
The death sentences were condemned by Western governments and rights groups. Some Western medical experts say negligence and poor hospital hygiene were responsible for the outbreak.

Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam earlier told a newspaper Libya would not execute the six and that a solution would be found.

The video, the latest of a series featuring Libi, showed the bearded militant wearing camouflage fatigues and sitting next to an assault rifle. It was produced by al Qaeda's media arm al-Sahab and posted on Web sites often used by Islamists.

Libi blasted Western countries for opposing the verdict.

"The case of the AIDS children is not the first in which the West uses double standards ... Whenever the victim is a Muslim, this has been the most distinctive feature of their policies," said Libi, whose real name is believed to be Mohammad Hassan.

* * *

The Economist
March 15, 2007

Europe.view
Shame Qaddafi, free the nurses
Bulgarians can use democracy to counter blackmail

LIBYA'S long imprisonment of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor is scandalous both for the arbitrary suffering imposed on the six victims and for the feebleness of the outside worldÒs response. The charges are preposterous, the conditions of detention have been hideous, the whole affair is a piece of Libyan political blackmail. Yet the European Union says it "respect[s] the independence of the Libyan courts"×literally, an incredible statement.

The six were arrested on March 7th 1999 on the charge of deliberately infecting 426 children in a Benghazi hospital with HIV, a virus which causes AIDS. Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, the Libyan dictator, said that the infections were part of a plot by the CIA or Mossad. The story was pushed hard by the state propaganda machine and is still widely believed in Libya.

A report by two outside scientists, Luc Montagnier (a discoverer of HIV) and Vittorio Colizzi, has overturned the deliberate infection theory. By far the most likely explanation for the AIDS outbreak was poor hospital hygiene.

In their eight years of detention the "Benghazi six" have been abominably treated, with both psychological and physical torture. They were sentenced to death by firing squad on May 6th 2004. The sentence has not yet been carried out.

Bulgaria has tried hard to make the scandal an international issue, and has also raised money to help the AIDS-infected children. But Libya appears to want to do a deal, involving freedom for Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, convicted of organising the Lockerbie bombing, and payment of $2.7 billion in compensation×the exact amount paid by Libya to the victims of that outrage. The argument amounts to: "You release a justly convicted Libyan, and we will free six unjustly convicted foreigners."

Amazingly, much of the rest of the world, including many African and Arab countries×and even some European politicians×seems to agree with Libya's attempt to link the issues. The African Union and Arab League have called for the issue not to be "politicised". And in that shameful impasse, the nurses are stuck.

Bulgarian public opinion, and the country's politicians, are solidly behind them. But what more can be done to raise the political pressure for their freedom? An ingenious and commendable suggestion comes from Georgi Gotev, a Bulgarian journalist.

On May 20th Bulgaria votes for 18 members of the European Parliament. The likely outcome is that six or seven will be elected from the Bulgarian Socialist Party, five or six from "Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria" (a new centrist party), two or three from the Turkish party, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, and two or three from the far-right Ataka party.

Mr Gotev suggests that the big parties each adopt two nurses as their top candidates, and the Turkish party takes the fifth. The choice would be random. The nursesÒ freedom, not their politics, is the issue.

This will demand a modest sacrifice on the part of five Bulgarian political insiders who would otherwise have boarded the gravy train that shuttles between Brussels and Strasbourg. But it will catapult the scandal of the imprisoned nurses into the heart of EuropeÒs political institutions, and demonstrate an excellent non-partisan spirit in Bulgarian politics (not always known for its sober pursuit of the national interest).

Bulgarian politicians, and voters, should co-operate.

The nurses' names are Kristiyana Valtcheva, Nasya Nenova, Valentina Siropulo, Valya Chervenyashka, and Snezhana Dimitrova. The Palestinian doctor is Ashraf al-Hajuj. They can be forgiven for knowing and caring little about the European Parliament after eight years in prison. But it is high time the parliament started knowing and caring a great deal more about them.

* * *

World Politics Watch
March 18, 2007

Corridors of Power
By Roland Flamini

A DEAL ON THE NURSES? - There might just be the glimmer of a hint of a deal on the five Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death in Libya after being found guilty of willfully infecting more than 400 Libyan children with HIV-AIDS in a hospital in Benghazi, according to a European source familiar with the case. The Bulgarian nurses - there's also a Palestinian doctor -- are to be retried on the grounds of irregularities in the first trial, including ignoring expert evidence that exculpates the nurses; and the word in Tripoli is that this time they will receive life sentences.

Libya and Bulgaria already have a standing agreement on prisoner exchange, and that will be exercised, allowing the nurses to finally go home, the source says.

There is still the issue of hefty compensation for the families of the infected children, but the government in Sofia can't afford the kind of numbers being discussed. That phase of the arrangement involves the European Union and the United States. The human rights issue has slowed down the growing rapprochement between Washington and the oil-rich North African state, and the Bush administration would like nothing more than to see it settled to everyone's mutual satisfaction.

***

The Economist
March 15, 2007

Europe.view
Shame Qaddafi, free the nurses
Bulgarians can use democracy to counter blackmail

LIBYA'S long imprisonment of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor is scandalous both for the arbitrary suffering imposed on the six victims and for the feebleness of the outside worldÒs response. The charges are preposterous, the conditions of detention have been hideous, the whole affair is a piece of Libyan political blackmail. Yet the European Union says it "respect[s] the independence of the Libyan courts"×literally, an incredible statement.

The six were arrested on March 7th 1999 on the charge of deliberately infecting 426 children in a Benghazi hospital with HIV, a virus which causes AIDS. Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, the Libyan dictator, said that the infections were part of a plot by the CIA or Mossad. The story was pushed hard by the state propaganda machine and is still widely believed in Libya.

A report by two outside scientists, Luc Montagnier (a discoverer of HIV) and Vittorio Colizzi, has overturned the deliberate infection theory. By far the most likely explanation for the AIDS outbreak was poor hospital hygiene.

In their eight years of detention the "Benghazi six" have been abominably treated, with both psychological and physical torture. They were sentenced to death by firing squad on May 6th 2004. The sentence has not yet been carried out.

Bulgaria has tried hard to make the scandal an international issue, and has also raised money to help the AIDS-infected children. But Libya appears to want to do a deal, involving freedom for Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, convicted of organising the Lockerbie bombing, and payment of $2.7 billion in compensation×the exact amount paid by Libya to the victims of that outrage. The argument amounts to: "You release a justly convicted Libyan, and we will free six unjustly convicted foreigners."

Amazingly, much of the rest of the world, including many African and Arab countries×and even some European politicians×seems to agree with Libya's attempt to link the issues. The African Union and Arab League have called for the issue not to be "politicised". And in that shameful impasse, the nurses are stuck.

Bulgarian public opinion, and the country's politicians, are solidly behind them. But what more can be done to raise the political pressure for their freedom? An ingenious and commendable suggestion comes from Georgi Gotev, a Bulgarian journalist.

On May 20th Bulgaria votes for 18 members of the European Parliament. The likely outcome is that six or seven will be elected from the Bulgarian Socialist Party, five or six from "Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria" (a new centrist party), two or three from the Turkish party, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, and two or three from the far-right Ataka party.

Mr Gotev suggests that the big parties each adopt two nurses as their top candidates, and the Turkish party takes the fifth. The choice would be random. The nursesÒ freedom, not their politics, is the issue.

This will demand a modest sacrifice on the part of five Bulgarian political insiders who would otherwise have boarded the gravy train that shuttles between Brussels and Strasbourg. But it will catapult the scandal of the imprisoned nurses into the heart of EuropeÒs political institutions, and demonstrate an excellent non-partisan spirit in Bulgarian politics (not always known for its sober pursuit of the national interest).

Bulgarian politicians, and voters, should co-operate.

The nurses' names are Kristiyana Valtcheva, Nasya Nenova, Valentina Siropulo, Valya Chervenyashka, and Snezhana Dimitrova. The Palestinian doctor is Ashraf al-Hajuj. They can be forgiven for knowing and caring little about the European Parliament after eight years in prison. But it is high time the parliament started knowing and caring a great deal more about them.

* * *

World Politics Watch
March 18, 2007

Corridors of Power
By Roland Flamini

A DEAL ON THE NURSES? -- There might just be the glimmer of a hint of a deal on the five Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death in Libya after being found guilty of willfully infecting more than 400 Libyan children with HIV-AIDS in a hospital in Benghazi, according to a European source familiar with the case. The Bulgarian nurses -- there's also a Palestinian doctor -- are to be retried on the grounds of irregularities in the first trial, including ignoring expert evidence that exculpates the nurses; and the word in Tripoli is that this time they will receive life sentences.

Libya and Bulgaria already have a standing agreement on prisoner exchange, and that will be exercised, allowing the nurses to finally go home, the source says.

There is still the issue of hefty compensation for the families of the infected children, but the government in Sofia can't afford the kind of numbers being discussed. That phase of the arrangement involves the European Union and the United States. The human rights issue has slowed down the growing rapprochement between Washington and the oil-rich North African state, and the Bush administration would like nothing more than to see it settled to everyone's mutual satisfaction.

***

The Washington Times
March 21, 2007

Can Libyan leopard change spots?
By Andrew Borowiec

After 37 years at Libya's helm marred by terrorist attacks, tension, foreign boycotts, reconciliation and theatrical outbursts, Moammar Gadhafi is promising -- once again -- to cooperate with the international community.

And this time, says the Libyan leader, it's for good. In statements aimed at the news media and potential economic partners, the man who calls himself "Brother Leader" admitted mistakes, insisted that "terrorism is out" and acknowledged that "Libya cannot row against the current."

Immediate international reactions were marked by confusion and caution. Some commentators doubted whether "the leopard has changed his spots." Others warned against too much enthusiasm for the promised changes.

"Don't take Libya off the hook," insisted one Western think tank, and a Libyan exile in Paris said the West "sees what it wants to see" in Col. Gadhafi and Libya -- where there is no indication the regime is relaxing its iron grip on the population of 5 million.

Weighing heavily on the hope for a "new Libya" is the death sentence by firing squad for five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, imprisoned in Libya since 1999 and accused of infecting 426 children with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

A retrial last December confirmed the sentence -- after official statements hinting at the potential release of the six prisoners. The merciless cat-and-mouse game has caused an international outcry.

Col. Gadhafi, who once accused the medics of being agents of the Central Intelligence Agency, has made no comment on the latest verdict. Libya has accused the West of pressure to quash the verdict "handed down by a competent tribunal."

Western experts insist there was no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the foreign personnel and blamed hospital conditions for the infections.

'Era of hostility' over?

Col. Gadhafi's most outspoken statements took place this month during celebrations marking the 30th anniversary of the Declaration of the People's Authority, a charter for a new system of governance by participation in "citizens' committees."

There are at least 6,000 such committees, which have had little effect on Libya's slide into penury, despite its oil wealth.

Describing his government's rejection of weapons of mass destruction, Col. Gadhafi said: "Libya will never go back. The era of hostility and confrontation is behind us." Yet "confrontation and hostility" was a long-standing feature after Col. Gadhafi, then a 27-year-old army captain, seized power in September 1969 from ailing King Idriss
al-Sanoussi, announced his "green revolution" and established the Libyan Arab Republic.

The Gadhafi regime intervened militarily in Chad, clashed with Egypt, tried to annex neighboring Tunisia, and has been blamed for a number of spectacular terrorist attacks, including the December 1988 explosion of a Pan American World Airways
flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 persons.

In 1986, the United States imposed economic sanctions on Libya, froze Libyan assets and ordered all Americans in Libya to leave the country. Later that year, after an explosion in a Berlin discotheque frequented by American military personnel,
Washington sent warplanes to bomb Tripoli and Benghazi, narrowly missing Col. Gadhafi himself.

The raids appeared to cool a number of ventures by the Libyan leader, described by President Reagan as "the mad dog of the Middle East" under whose rule Libya was turned into an isolated pariah.

Terrorist label gone

The United States listed Libya as a "rogue" state pursuing international terrorism, and the United Nations imposed its own sanctions on the North African country.

The terrorist label was removed from Libya last May when Washington re-established diplomatic relations with Tripoli and welcomed Col. Gadhafi into the international community. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice explained the decision as a result of "tangible results that flow from the historic decisions taken by Libya's leadership to renounce terrorism and to abandon its weapons of mass destruction programs."
But Libya's economy based almost entirely on oil remains a shambles, although a number of Western firms rushed to offer investments and expertise.

Nearly 90 percent of Libya's territory of 678,000 square miles is desert. From the fertile coastal areas of Tripolitania in the northwest and Cyrenaica in the east, the ground rises to limestone rocks then slopes toward the sands of the Sahara,
dotted with oases.

It is there -- in that barren, desolate area -- that Libya's only wealth has been found: Its oil reserves are estimated at 30 billion barrels -- compared to Saudi Arabia's 260 billion -- but nonetheless a major source of income for a small country.

Libya has some of the most spectacular Roman ruins in North Africa, and in recent years has been trying to entice tourists. Lack of adequate infrastructure and strict laws banning alcohol have not been helpful. In Roman times, Libya also served as a transit route for slaves and wild beasts from the heart of Africa to Tripoli ("Bride of the Sea"), then on to Rome to keep the populace amused. Historians note that Caesar Augustus had 3,600 animals killed in 26 games, while Trajan had 2,246 slaughtered in a single day.

Politically, dependence on oil has committed Libya to the desert, something Col. Gadhafi, ever the actor, tried to project by wearing elaborate Bedouin garb and receiving foreign visitors in ornate tents.

Recently, however, he decided to portray himself as an African rather than Arab, claiming the Arabs were "unworthy" of his attention and that talk of Arab unity is "an illusion and mirage."

"I want to create a new Africa," he said. "My role is to become a soldier for Africa."

The Libyan leader provided considerable entertainment at international conferences he attended with an escort of stunning young women carrying submachine guns. At the start of 2007, he was one of the most durable heads of state, with no significant opposition.

'Good news' on rights

Human Rights Watch in the United States, while severely criticizing Col. Gadhafi's rule, recently discerned "good news from Libya on the human rights front."

"The notorious People's Courts, which dispatched perceived political opponents to prison or death, were abolished in January 2005," the group noted. "A handful of political prisoners have been released, while others have been granted new trials. ... Still, Libya remains a closed and tightly controlled society. ... Libyans are not allowed to criticize the government, its political system or its leader."

"Torture remains a serious problem, and the Libyan security apparatus is pervasive," the assessment concluded. Nonetheless, Col. Gadhafi persists in portraying his system as a new form of democracy in which all citizens participate.

People should rule themselves, and not elect others to do it, he claims. He himself, Col. Gadhafi says, is a guide, who leads his people before they learn their responsibilities.

In such an atmosphere, foreign experts note a steady rise in the influence of Saif al-Islam, Col. Gadhafi's son, who is described as being the only person capable of introducing desperately need economic reforms.

Western experts say Libya's entire economic structure has to be reformed and a new managerial class created, as well as a private sector, which does not exist.

Despite their country's oil wealth, most Libyans live in poverty and in a political straitjacket. In his latest appeals to Western political and economic circles, Col. Gadhafi has not signaled a significant change.

***

Newsday
April 1, 2007

Fixing blame in Libya HIV outbreak

BY DAN MORRISON
Special to Newsday

BENGHAZI, Libya - It was autumn of 1998 when Bashir Jarbou's wife first noticed something odd in the whitewashed corridors at Al-Fateh Children's Hospital.

The Jarbous' pneumonia-stricken 4-month-old son, Milad, had been moved to a separate room. Nurses had started wearing rubber gloves. Jarbou, a wiry English teacher, asked what was going on.

"They said they were testing them for a virus - something called HIV," he recalled recently. "I said, 'What's HIV?'"

Soon, he learned the terrible truth. Milad was among 438 children infected at Al-Fateh with the virus that causes AIDS.

It was the biggest hospital-borne HIV outbreak in history. Twenty mothers also were infected while nursing their HIV-positive infants, and 57 children have died so far. Milad died in 1999.

"It was a death sentence for the children, and it was social death for the families," Jarbou said. "This is a conservative society. AIDS means drugs, prostitution, homosexuality."

The Benghazi outbreak isn't just a local catastrophe, but also an international tragedy with charges of mass murder by foreign medical personnel, prison torture, bad science and questionable hospital conditions.

An early investigation cleared Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi's pariah state and its decrepit health care system. In December, after eight years in prison and two trials, five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were sentenced to death for purposely infecting the children - part of a U.S. or Israeli plot, Gadhafi has said.

The six are now on trial again - this time on slander charges after accusing their captors of torture. And Benghazi's children keep dying.

It's past midnight and police Col. Juma Mishri is tired. Rubbing his eyes, he recalls how, in late 1998, he was sent to crack the strange epidemic. He says he determined that Bulgarian nurse Kristiana Valcheva had paid the others to infect the children.

"It was very difficult to believe a nurse would do something like this," he said, adding that she freely confessed. Among the evidence were bottles of HIV-tainted plasma that Mishri says he found in Valcheva's home, confessions by two nurses, and a report by Libyan experts suggesting "deliberate transmission of HIV to the infected children."

Sorting through evidence

Trial judges blocked independent tests of the plasma bottles. The foreign medical personnel recanted their confessions, and the court rejected an analysis of the medical evidence clearing them - even though it had been undertaken by French scientist Luc Montagnier, who first discovered HIV.

"They confessed because they were guilty," Mishri said, denying the six were tortured.

They confessed to stop the torture, Valcheva told Bulgarian radio in January. "My body was covered with black-and-blue hematomas; blood and lymph were flowing from my feet," she said. "But the beatings paled in comparison to the electric shocks."

Ashraf Juma, the jailed Palestinian doctor, singled out Mishri during a recent hearing. "You should be ashamed of your crimes," Juma said. "You tortured us."

A team from the UN World Health Organization, called to Benghazi in 1998, found the HIV outbreak probably was caused by unsterilized equipment, a common problem in the developing world. The team was not allowed back.

Later studies, including a recent genetic analysis of blood samples by the British journal Nature, also blamed hospital hygiene. The Benghazi strain of HIV, it said, originated in West Africa. The outbreak began before the medics arrived in Libya.

"From a scientific point of view, everything is clear," said Vittorio Colizzi, an Italian immunologist who analyzed the case with Montagnier. "It is a political matter."

The European Union, human rights groups and 100 Nobel laureates have called for the nurses and doctor to be freed, appeals the Libyan victims find insulting.

"It's like it's we who infected them, not the other way around," said Rhouma Hassan Rhouma, 22, who acquired HIV at 13.

Ostracized and desperate, parents formed the Family Association of HIV/AIDS Children of Benghazi, a seaport 600 miles west of Tripoli. The group became a political force, imbued with grief and martyrdom.

To them, there is no question of guilt. Many refer to the fact that the Benghazi HIV strain hadn't been seen before the outbreak.

"This proves it was created in a lab," said Idriss Laga, who founded the group and whose 9-year-old daughter was infected as an infant.

A scientific challenge

They also point to an article in the Libyan Journal of Medicine by an American immunologist, Omar Bagasra, challenging the methodology and conclusions of Western AIDS experts. Bagasra said by e-mail there was "a lot" of scientific evidence "to indicate intentional infection." Said Laga: "It is irrefutable evidence, and it came from scientists in America and not from us."

Luc Perrin, a top Swiss AIDS researcher whose own analysis was rejected by the Libyan government, called Bagasra's article "garbage."

The families are bewildered by support for the hospital workers and have turned to conspiracy theories. Only one force, Laga said, had the power to infect the children and make heroes of their killers: The Freemasons "are behind this crime," he said. "I was blind until now. These thoughts give me light through the tunnel."

Despite the raw emotions, many believe Gadhafi, who is opening Libya to foreign capital and expertise, eventually will free those charged. Libya has offered clemency in exchange for $10 million for each victim - the same amount Libya agreed to pay for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Bulgaria has refused. Gadhafi also has suggested trading the six for Abdel Baset Ali-Mohamed, a Libyan agent serving time in Scotland for the bombing.

"The families are a potent force from a neglected quarter," said a Western diplomat. "Gadhafi has to salvage Libya's self-respect. Linking this to [getting the agent home from] Lockerbie is a way to do that."

Jarbou was uncomfortable with tying the cases together. "Our dignity is above everything," he said. "Our blood will not come cheap."

***

The Financial Times
May 29, 2007

Hopes rise for jailed medics
By Alex Barker in Washington, Daniel Dombey in London and Fidelius Schmid in Brussels

British and European officials are intensifying efforts to free five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor sentenced to death in Libya, and hope for a breakthrough in coming weeks.

Libyan courts have twice found the six guilty of deliberately infecting more than 400 children with HIV in 1998 despite worldwide concerns about the credibility of the case and scientificevidence that put the blame on poor sanitation.

European Union and British negotiators have recently made progress in long-running talks with Libya aimed at rescinding the verdict and releasing the medics in return for a compensation package for victims.

The issue is a high priority for Germany, which is eager to make progress during its presidency of the EU, which concludes at the end of June.

EU foreign ministers at a meeting in May agreed to increase bilateral contacts with Tripoli. France and Italy have also joined a "core group" negotiating with Libya. The group was previously made up of the UK, the US, the European Commission and Bulgaria.

"We are working very hard to find a solution, together with the Commission," said an EU diplomat.

The staff of Tony Blair, the British prime minister, who is currently visiting Africa, have also intensified efforts to resolve the dispute.

Hopes of a deal have been dashed several times since the original sentencing. But while officials caution that negotiations could still falter, recent developments have raised hopes that Libya is ready to grant a reprieve.

A Libyan court on Sunday dismissed charges that the medics defamed police officers during their retrial last year by claiming torture was used to extract their confessions.

The surprise ruling, which was left unexplained by the judge, was made a day after a foundation run by an influential son of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan ruler, that has been leading the talks said there were "signs of a resolution [to] this crisis in the near future".

A Libyan court is expected to rule on the medics' final appeal in the near future.

More than 50 of thechildren have died since the outbreak in 1998.

The imprisonment of the six medics, an unresolved legacy from Libya's period as a pariah state, has become a political issue in Bulgaria, which joined the EU in January, and Libya.

The Gadaffi Foundation, a charity run by Mr Gadaffi's son Saif al-Islam, has played a central role in talks. In a statement, the foundation said the victims' families had backed their efforts to reach a solution, including unspecified terms agreed in Brussels earlier this month.

The EU has allocated money for the victims' families but Tripoli has pressed for payments in line with the sums Libya paid to families of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing of 1988.

***