Libya seeks death penalty in HIV case

A Libyan prosecutor demanded the death penalty yesterday for five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor on trial for the second time on charges that they infected hundreds of children with the HIV virus.

"The act was cruel, criminal and inhuman. It's a human catastrophe," prosecutor Omar Abdulkhaleq told the court, adding 53 of the 430 children infected had subsequently died.

"We demand the death penalty for the accused." A previous trial of the six, who have been detained since 1999, ended with their conviction on charges they intentionally infected 426 children with HIV when they worked in a hospital in Benghazi in the late 1990s. In December last year, the supreme court overturned the convictions, which had resulted in sentences of death by firing squad, and sent the case back to a lower court. The retrial began in May.

The case has slowed Libya's efforts to end decades of diplomatic isolation as Bulgaria and its allies, the European Union and the United States, say the nurses are innocent. The medics, Palestinian doctor Ashraf Alhajouj and Bulgarians Snezhana Dimitrova, Nasya Nenova, Valentina Siropolu, Christiana Valcheva and Valia Cherveniashka denied the charges in both their first and second trials and have repeatedly testified that they were tortured to make them confess.

Mr Abdulkhaleq told the Tripoli court that the six had also committed offences related to buying and selling alcohol, having illicit sexual relations and carrying out illegal hard currency exchanges. Sex outside marriage is illegal in Libya.