Libyan court condemns Bulgarian nurses for infecting children with HIV

TRIPOLI, Libya -- Outside court, dozens of Libyans chanted "Execution! Execution!" cheering the conviction of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor they say deliberately infected their children with HIV.

Bulgaria's president called the verdict "absurd," and the U.S. and European governments expressed disbelief and condemnation. AIDS experts touted research they said proved the children were infected before the foreign medical workers -- who already have been jailed for seven years -- even came to Libya.

Tuesday's verdict prolongs a case that has hurt Libya's ties to the West and stirred deep bitterness and anger on both sides. The six defendants say they were tortured with electric shocks and forced to confess early in their detention.

The Tripoli court found them guilty of intentionally infecting 400 children with HIV at a hospital in the city of Benghazi during a botched experiment to find a cure for AIDS, and sentenced them to death. Fifty of the children have died, and the rest have been treated in Europe.

The five women and the Palestinian man sat stony-faced behind the bars of the detention pen as the judge read the ruling.

"God is great!" Ibrahim Mohammed al-Aurabi, the father of an infected child, shouted in the courtroom. "For the free Libyan people, all the free Libyan people in free struggling Libya, this is a happy day."

Speaking from the defendant's pen, the Palestinian doctor, Ashraf al-Hazouz, said: "Everything said in this trial is a lie. All what is said in this case -- that we are implicated in this issue -- is a lie and without any medical, logical or legal base,"

The case now goes to the Libyan Supreme Court for an automatic appeal, the latest stage in a long legal process. The six were convicted and sentenced to death a year ago, but the Supreme Court ordered a retrial after an international outcry that the first trial was unfair.

"This sentence was another blow, another shock for us," Zdravko Georgiev, husband of one of the nurses, Kristiana Valcheva, told the Associated Press in Bulgaria.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, meeting with Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin in Washington, said the United States was "very disappointed with the outcome" and urged the medical workers be freed and "allowed to go home at the earliest possible date."

The European Union said it was "shocked" by the verdict. Spokesman Johannes Laitenberger said the EU had not yet decided to take steps against Libya while the ruling is appealed -- but he "did not rule anything out." Bulgaria will join the EU on Jan. 1.

Bulgaria and European officials have blamed the infections on unhygienic practices at the hospital and accuse Libya of making the medical workers scapegoats.

An analysis of HIV and hepatitis virus samples from some of the children concluded the viral strains were circulating at the hospital and the surrounding area well before the nurses and doctor arrived in March 1998, according to research published this month on the Web site of the journal Nature.

The case has been deeply politicized from the start. International anger over the prosecution has hampered -- though not halted -- Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's efforts to end his pariah status with the West.

Over the summer, the United States restored ties with Libya, cut since 1980, and removed it from its terror list after Gadhafi renounced weapons of mass destruction and reached a compensation deal for victims of the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am flight over Scotland. The U.S. quietly reopened its embassy in Tripoli, but Rice has balked at visiting Libya for a formal opening ceremony.

On the Libyan side, Gadhafi's government faces intense popular pressure for a guilty verdict. Clashes broke out in Benghazi when the Supreme Court ordered a retrial in December. Libya's second-largest city, Benghazi has been a center for anti-Gadhafi Islamic fundamentalist groups in the past and an innocent verdict could fuel opposition to the government -- particularly if conditions at the hospital were to blame for the infections.

Gadhafi has tried to reach a deal by which Bulgaria would pay compensation to the victims, a proposal Sofia has rejected, saying it would imply the nurses' guilt.

The defendants have claimed they were tortured in their detention, and two of the nurses -- who are all women -- said they were raped. A Libyan court acquitted several Libyan prison officials of the charge.

Some 50 relatives of the infected children demonstrated outside the court Tuesday, holding poster-sized pictures of their children and bearing placards that read "Death for the children killers" and "HIV made in Bulgaria."

In Bulgaria, President Georgi Parvanov and Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev urged Libyan authorities "to intervene immediately" to reconsider the verdict and free the medics.

The case was sent immediately to the Libyan Supreme Court for appeal, but it was not known when the court would rule. If it upholds the ruling, the case goes to the Judicial Board, which can uphold or annul it, Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel-Rahman Shalqam said.

An international legal observer, Francois Cantier of Lawyers Without Borders, criticized the retrial for failing to admit enough scientific evidence.

"We need scientific evidence. It is a medical issue, not only a judicial one," Cantier said.

Luc Montagnier -- the French doctor who was a co-discoverer of HIV -- testified in the first trial that the deadly virus was active in the hospital before the Bulgarian nurses began their contracts there in 1998.

More evidence for that argument surfaced on Dec. 6 -- too late to be submitted in court -- when Nature magazine published the analysis of HIV and hepatitis virus samples from the children.

Using changes in the genetic information of HIV over time as a "molecular clock," the analysts concluded the virus was contracted as much as three years before the defendants arrived at the hospital.

(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)