Bulgarian News Network

LIBYA/BULGARIA: Bulgarian Medics in Libya May Be Left to Mercy of Infected Children�s Parents: Official

Libya may pardon 5 Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor it has sentenced to death for allegedly infecting hundreds of children with the AIDS virus only if families of the children ask for clemency, a report said Monday.

The medics are now appealing their verdict at Libya�s Supreme Court.

They will be left entirely to the mercy of the infected children�s parents if the court confirms the death sentences, state TV quoted Council of Europe Secretary General Walter Schwimmer as saying.

In a letter to Bulgarian lawmakers Schwimmer said Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Mohammed Shalgham gave him these clarifications during a recent discussion they had at a meeting of the Organization Islamic Conference in Turkey�s city of Istanbul.

According to Schwimmer, Schalgham added Libya would appreciate aid from Bulgaria and Europe to help it tackle its AIDS problem.

It was not clear when the Supreme Court would rule on the medics� appeals.

A criminal court in the coastal city of Benghazi has sentenced them to a firing squad last May 6 on charges of intentionally injecting blood and blood products contaminated with the HIV virus that causes AIDS to 426 children at a local hospital.

Libya says that 40 children have already died of AIDS and more than a dozen of mothers have contracted the lethal virus.

The court has ignored a report by HIV co-discoverer French doctor Luc Montagnier and Italian AIDS expert Dr. Vittorio Collizzi, who testified the HIV infection had spread in the hospital due to bad hygiene before it hired the medics in 1997.

In court the nurses have renounced confessions of guilt, saying Libyan police extorted them by severe tortures, which included electric jolts, beatings and rapes.

A report in the Sofia daily 24 Chasa has said the court based its verdict solely on confessions one of the nurses and the doctor made after being tortured. It rejected Montagnier and Collizzi�s report as "scientifically groundless" and "failing to identify the cause of the contagion."

Bulgaria has won wide international support for its efforts to reverse the verdicts, which it has branded "unfair and absurd."