Libya to hear Aids experts
2004-01-13 09:20
Sofia - A Libyan court hearing the case of seven mostly Bulgarian health workers accused of spreading Aids in a Libyan hospital has agreed to consider testimony by international experts, one of the accused said on Monday.
Zdravko Georgiev, a Bulgarian doctor, told Bulgarian radio that he felt "a little calmer" after the court at Benghazi, in northern Libya, announced its decision on Monday.
Georgiev, five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor face the death penalty if found guilty of infecting 426 children in a hospital in Benghazi with the virus that causes Aids.
Twenty-three of the children have already died.
State prosecutors charge that they infected the children with tainted blood products, but Luc Montagnier - the French doctor who first isolated the Human Immune-Deficiency Virus (HIV) - testified in September that the epidemic had begun before the arrival of the accused.
He said it was probably caused by unsterilised needles and other equipment.
Libyan experts last week rejected a report by Montagnier and another Aids expert, in a development Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passi said did not "favour the accused."
Georgiev said the accused were not given the names of the experts whose testimony the court would examine.
All have pleaded innocent in court.
The Libyan police said two of the nurses and the Palestinian doctor admitted guilt, but the three have told the court that they confessed under duress after being maltreated by the police.
The trial began in February 1999 and is due to resume on January 26.