Sofia hails Libya Aids ruling
2005-12-25 20:47
Sofia - Bulgaria on Sunday welcomed a decision of Libya's supreme court to reverse the death sentences and order a retrial for five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, sued for having allegedly deliberately infected children with the Aids virus.
The move raised in the Balkan state renewed hopes that the six defendants might be set free.
"The unfair death sentences were reversed.... We hope that the swiftness and the effectiveness demonstrated by the Libyan court in the past days will help to solve the case as soon as possible," President Georgy Parvanov said.
"This development of the process makes it possible to implement the international initiatives aimed at helping the victims of the tragedy in Benghazi and to re-establish the traditionally good relations between our two countries," he added.
'Scapegoats'
The six medical workers, who have already spent almost seven years in a Libyan prison, were sentenced to death by firing squad in May 2004 for having "knowingly" injected with HIV-contaminated blood about 430 children in a hospital in the northern town of Benghazi.
Fifty-one of the children have since died of the infection.
The six are appealing their sentences based on the testimony of Western medical experts, including the French co-discoverer of the HIV-virus Luc Montagnier, who said that the six were scapegoats for poor hygiene at the hospital.
At the appeal hearing on Sunday, Libya's supreme court at Tripoli had been expected to either reject it and confirm the death penalty or order the case back to the lower court for retrial.
"This is the best news we could receive on Christmas! It gives us reasons to be optimistic since we will be allowed to present new evidence on their innocence," the co-ordinator of the Bulgarian defence Trayan Markovski said after the court ruling.
Another lawyer, Hari Haralampiev, warned that "long and numerous court hearings are newly ahead".
Indeed, still despairing, the mother of one of the nurses, Zorka Anachkova, lashed out at the Libyan authorities for "continuing to hold in prison, with no evidence, these innocents, and at the same time knowing perfectly well that they do not have anything to do with the Aids hospital epidemics."
Tortured
Shivering with cold and anxiety, Anachkova had awaited the Christmas Day court decision in front of the Libyan embassy in Sofia with a Bible in her hand.
Her daughter Kristiana Valcheva, together with another nurse and the doctor, have said they were tortured into confessing guilt.
These confessions were later withdrawn but nevertheless formed the basis for the conviction last May.
Meanwhile, Bulgaria has intensified its effort to find a solution to the bilateral crisis through politics.
Following several rounds of internationally aided bilateral talks, Sofia and Tripoli announced they would set up a charity fund for the families of the Aids-infected children in Libya.
Sofia has many times rejected the idea of "buying freedom" for the nurses, saying that this would amount to recognising guilt, but it saw the creation of the fund as a compromise solution.