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Prison, not death for doctor
06/05/2004 20:16 - (SA)
Sofia - One of the six Bulgarians sentenced by a Libyan court on Thursday in a scandal over Aids cases received only prison time and not a death sentence like the five others, Bulgarian Foreign Minister Georgana Grancharova said.
"There are five death sentences for the nurses and a prison sentence of four years for Dr Zdravko Georgiev," Grancharova said.
But she added: "We are speaking on the basis of preliminary information, since official information, the verdict and the reasons for it, are to be given in the next few days."
Grancharova was speaking to reporters as she met with Libyan charge d'affaires Ismail Chalgham.
Bulgarian radio reported that Georgiev was to be released.
The Bulgarian lawyer for the defendants, Plamen Yalnazov, had earlier told Bulgarian media that Georgiev had received a four-year prison term for "money trafficking."
Yalnazov said he had verified the sentencing with the Libyan court in the seaside town of Benghazi.
In Tripoli, a judicial source had said the court in Benghazi had sentenced six Bulgarians and a Palestinian doctor to death by firing squad after convicting them of deliberately spreading Aids in a children's hospital.
Yalnazov confirmed that five of the Bulgarians and the Palestinian had been sentenced to death.
Georgiev is the husband of one of the five Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death and had not worked in the hospital in Benghazi where the Aids cases were found.
But he was accused of supplying the HIV-contaminated blood that the nurses allegedly gave to Libyan children.
- AFP
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