Timeline: Libyan Aids saga

2007-07-18 11:22

Tripoli - Key dates in the Libyan Aids saga involving foreign medics who have been on death row for three years:

February 1999 - Bulgaria says 19 of its health workers, employed at a hospital in the Libyan city of Benghazi, have been arrested on suspicion of deliberately infecting 438 children. At the time, there had been no confirmed cases of HIV infection or Aids in the North African country.

2000 - Five Bulgarian women nurses and two male doctors, one Bulgarian and one Palestinian, go on trial over the allegations. The Bulgarian government says its nationals have complained of being tortured.

2001 - Libyan prosecutors call for the death sentence. All plead not guilty.

2002 - The court throws out the case for lack of proof, but the public prosecutor launches a new procedure. Three of the Bulgarians who have made admissions of guilt retract them, saying they were obtained under duress.

2003 - French Aids specialists testify that the infection of the children was caused by poor hygiene.

2004 - The court sentences the five nurses and the Palestinian doctor to death, while the Bulgarian doctor gets four years on a separate charge.

2005 - A Libyan court acquits 10 officers accused of torturing the health workers. Libya's supreme court orders a new trial of the six.

Libya and Bulgaria set up a special aid fund for the victims, under the aegis of the European Union.

2006 - The scientific review Nature quotes a study saying that the virus, which infected the children must have been introduced to the hospital before the medics began working there.

2007:

June 11 - US President George W Bush visits Bulgaria, now a European Union member, and calls for the six to be freed.

The Palestinian doctor is granted Bulgarian citizenship.

July 10 - The Gaddafi Foundation run by the son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi says an agreement has been reached under which the medics could be pardoned. The next day the supreme court again confirms the death sentences.

July 15 - A source close to the case says the families of the infected children have accepted compensation of at least $1m a case.

July 16 - Libya's top legal body, the Supreme Judicial Council, postpones by a day a decision to decide whether to confirm or annul the death sentences.

It is to consider documents in which the medics seek a pardon and agree to rule out any legal action against Libya linked to the eight years they have spent in prison.

July 17 - The Supreme Judicial Council commutes the death sentences to life in prison hours after the families announce that they have dropped their demand that the prisoners be executed.

Bulgaria welcomes the decision as a "step in the right direction".

July 24 - Six foreign medics convicted of infecting Libyan children with HIV arrived in Sofia after being freed by the African country under an accord with the European Union.

Since the start of the crisis a total of 56 children have died; some of those infected are reported to have passed the virus on to their parents.

- AFP