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Shock, joy after death sentence
19/12/2006 14:36 - (SA)
Tripoli - A Libyan court sentenced five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death on Tuesday for deliberately infecting hundreds of children with the virus that causes Aids, provoking a chorus of Western condemnation.
The ruling, the latest episode in what experts said had been a deeply politicised case, could be a setback for Libya's efforts to improve ties with the West.
The children's families at the trial hailed the ruling as a welcome act of defiance of the West.
Subhy Abdullah, whose daughter Mona, 7, died from Aids contracted at the hospital in the town of Benghazi, where the medics worked, said: "Justice has been done. We are happy.
"They should be executed quickly." Abdullah was speaking after the guilty verdicts were announced by Judge Mahmoud Haouissa at the end of a seven-month retrial of the case.
426 Libyan children infected
In Bulgaria, Polina Dimitrova, a daughter of one of the nurses, Snezhana Dimitrova, said: "This is such a disgrace. I simply cannot believe such injustice can be done."
The six were accused of infecting 426 Libyan children, more than 50 of whom have since died, with HIV at a hospital in Benghazi in the late 1990s.
The medics had denied the charge and their defence lawyer said they planned to appeal against their latest conviction.
They were first found guilty in a 2004 trial and sentenced to death by firing squad. But, the supreme court quashed the ruling last year, citing unspecified failings in the case, and ordered a retrial.
European Union justice and security commissioner Franco Frattini said he was shocked and disappointed by the ruling. Amnesty International condemned the decision.
'God is greatest'
Bulgarian foreign minister Ivailo Kalfin said: "The decision is deeply disappointing. The Libyan court did not take into consideration all the proof of the nurses' innocence."
Western analysts had said the case was embroiled in power politics and forecast a solution could take many more months.
Some analysts suspected Libya was likely to keep the six as bargaining chips until talks yield a financial payout from the international community to appease the children's families.
Haouissa didn't say how the six should be executed, but Libya's preferred method was a firing squad. Relatives of the children attending the hearing broke down in tears at the verdicts, shouting: "God is greatest".
Referring to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, relatives shouted: "Go ahead, our falcon, in defiance of the West." The six sat calmly as the verdicts were announced.
The Palestinian doctor, Ashraf Alhajouj, said: "The verdicts will change nothing. we are innocent."
Luc Montagnier, a French doctor who first detected the HIV virus, had said the infections were first present in the Benghazi hospital in 1997, a year before the medics arrived.
- Reuters
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