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HIV medics' ordeal to be filmed
06/08/2007 17:06 - (SA)
Sofia - Hollywood filmmakers hope to
bring to the big screen the eight-year ordeal of six foreign
medics convicted of deliberately injecting 460 Libyan children
with the HIV virus.
Sixth Sense Productions Inc, which helped raise funding for
Oscar-nominated genocide drama Hotel Rwanda, said the five
Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor had signed over their
life rights for the film project The Benghazi Six.
The medics, who were sentenced to death, were freed on July
24 after the European Union brokered a cooperation deal with
Libya following years of complex legal and political battles.
The medical workers have always maintained their innocence
and said they were tortured into confessing to intentionally
starting an epidemic in which hundreds of children were infected
with the virus that causes Aids while working in Libya's second
biggest city of Benghazi in 1998.
'Learn about this injustice'
"The story of The Benghazi Six is?inspirational having
the six medics survive what they survived in prison throughout
the years and lived to see their freedom," said Sam Feuer,
president of development and production at Sixth Sense.
"The world needs to learn about this injustice. It's not
just a Bulgarian story, its a human story that the world will
relate to and learn from," he told Reuters by email on Sunday.
The EU, which Bulgaria joined in January, and the United
Sates had pushed for the medics' release, pointing to evidence
of torture and studies showing the epidemic started before the
nurses arrived at the Benghazi's children hospital.
Although focused on the medics, the film will also show the
tragedy of the children infected with the virus, Feuer said.
More than 50 of the children have died.
Hollywood stars
Sixth Sense is in talks with Ann Peacock, who wrote the
screenplay adaptation of the children's fantasy blockbuster The
Chronicles of Narnia, to write the script for the medics film,
Feuer said. The company is also interviewing directors.
"Hollywood stars will star in it. Our job is to develop the
best script possible that will attract them," said Feuer.
Sixth Sense producers will come to Sofia to meet the medics
and their families once the company lines up a screenwriter.
The medics said they were glad their ordeal might be shown
one day on the big screen.
"The world will see the truth. The world must see the truth.
Such a case doesn't happen every day," said Dr Zdravko Georgiev,
husband of one of the nurses.
He was acquitted in the HIV case
in 2004, but not allowed to leave the country until last month.
Inefficient health-care system
The Bulgarian nurses and Georgiev left the relatively poor
Balkan country in the late 1990s to work in Libya where medical
workers' salaries were higher. Nineteen Bulgarian medics were
detained in early 1999 and 13 were later released.
Western scientists have said Libya's inefficient health-care
system was the real culprit for the HIV infection.
Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov pardoned the nurses and
the Palestinian doctor, who recently took Bulgarian citizenship,
after they arrived in Sofia two weeks ago.
The medics' return to Bulgaria closed what Libya's critics
called a human rights scandal and advanced the long-isolated
north African country's efforts to normalise ties with the West.
- Reuters
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South Africa
