Libya Orders Death of 6 for HIV Contamination

A Libyan court sentenced five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor Thursday to death by firing squad after convicting them of deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with the virus that causes AIDS.

Bulgaria called the verdicts “absurd” and was joined in protest by the European Union and the United States.

In 2001, Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi said the children were infected as part of an experiment ordered by the U.S. or Israeli secret services.

The condemned, detained in February 1999, were convicted of infecting 426 Libyan children at a Benghazi hospital with blood products contaminated with HIV. They had pleaded not guilty, arguing that the epidemic started before they began work at the hospital.

EU aspirant Bulgaria has criticized the trial as unfair, saying there is no hard evidence except for confessions from two nurses who were held without counsel for a year before being indicted. Nine Libyans have been on trial on charges of using torture to get the confessions out of them.

Scores of dancing and chanting relatives of the HIV-infected children took to the streets near the court in the 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.

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

Bulgaria’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 Kadafi to act like a humanist to win certain political credit which he needs from world public opinion,” he told national radio.