France to help Aids accused
2004-05-14 20:02
Sofia - France has assured Bulgaria that it will intervene on behalf of five Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death by a Libyan court in a case involving Aids-contaminated blood, according to a letter.
French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier expressed "France's solidarity over this distressing decision" by the court in the letter to his Bulgarian counterpart Solomon Passy.
"The French authorities will intervene with Libya on a bilateral basis and within the European framework so that the appeal's procedure can lead as quickly as possible to the release of your compatriots and the Palestinian doctor also sentenced to the death penalty," Barnier wrote.
It follows the sentencing to death by firing squad of the five Bulgarian health workers and a Palestinian doctor by a court in the northern Libyan city of Benghazi on May 6.
They are accused of deliberately spreading Aids in a paediatric hospital in the northern city, causing the death of dozens of children and infecting hundreds of others.
All six proclaim their innocence and Bulgaria has said it will appeal the verdict against its five citizens.
France will also stay in close contact with the Irish presidency of the European Union so that "a new high-level European demarche is quickly undertaken", Barnier added.
The defendants' lawyers have said their clients are being used as scapegoats for inadequate sterilisation of instruments at the hospital before the medical workers arrived in 1998.
- SAPA