Aids case appeal ruling on Xmas
2005-12-18 08:51
Sofia - A Libyan court will hear an appeal on December 25 from five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor against their death sentences on charges of injecting children with HIV/Aids, the Bulgarian foreign ministry said on Saturday.
The Tripoli supreme court hearing coinciding with Christmas Day was not done intentionally but showed the Libyan authorities wanted to hasten the procedure, foreign minister Ivalo Kalfin told national television.
In mid-November the court adjourned until January 31 the hearing to decide on the appeal from the medics sentenced in May 2004 to death by firing squad.
Accused of deliberately injecting 426 children with HIV/Aids in a hospital in the northern town of Benghazi, the six have spent the past seven years in jail.
Fifty-one of the children have since died.
The supreme court could confirm the sentence of death by firing squad, order a new trial or postpone its decision.
Western medical experts say the six were scapegoats for poor hygiene at the hospital and their cause has been championed by the European Union and the United States.
Sofia has encouraged moves to improve relations with Libya, which has suggested the death sentences could be lifted if Bulgaria provided medical care for the HIV-infected children.
Last week representatives of a Bulgarian-Libyan friendship committee visited Libya to meet the families of children from the Benghazi hospital.