Libya sentences six Bulgarians, Palestinian to death
TRIPOLI, May 6: A Libyan court on Thursday condemned six Bulgarians and a Palestinian doctor to death by firing squad after convicting them of deliberately spreading Aids in a children's hospital
, a verdict which could damage Libya's improving ties with the West.
The United States and the European Commission (EC) reacted swiftly to condemn the ruling. "The commission is extremely preoccupied and deeply disappointed," said a spokesman for the EU executive, which only last week hosted a landmark visit by Libyan leader Moamer Qadhafi.
The State Department said legal and human rights of the accused had been violated numerous times since the allegations were first made five years ago and vowed to continue to raise the matter with Libyan officials.
"We have been following this every closely for five years," spokesman Richard Boucher said. "We have been very critical of Libyan violations of the legal and human rights of the Bulgarian medics. We find the verdict that was pronounced in the court to be unacceptable."
The defendants were in the court in the northern city of Benghazi when the sentence was handed down in line with a law "which stipulates capital punishment for whoever causes the death of more than one person", a judicial source said. Nine Libyans were acquitted.
The Palestinian and a Bulgarian doctor as well as five female nurses from Bulgaria were found guilty of having "caused the deaths of 46 children, while 380 more were infected," he said.
The accused were convicted of having deliberately infected more than 400 children with the HIV virus that can lead to AIDS.Justice Minister Ali al-Hasnawi said that he had "full confidence in the Libyan justice system" and stressed that the seven could appeal to his country's supreme court.
The source said the defendants did not react in court to the verdict, which was read out with international observers present. But Bulgarian radio reported that they intended to appeal. Relatives of the infected children who had attended the trial, expressed their joy at the sentences in the streets of Benghazi.
In Sofia, Bulgaria's parliament speaker Ognian Guerdjikov said he was sure the Bulgarians would not be executed, as he expects Mr Qadhafi to make a humanitarian gesture.
"I expect that Moamer Qadhafi will behave like a humanitarian in order to win the political influence which he wants to have within the international community," Mr Guerdjikov told the Bulgarian state radio.
The Bulgarian government called the sentence unacceptable for the Bulgarian government and state. "There will be an appeal," government spokesman Dimitar Tsonev told BNT national television.
"The Bulgarian government will continue all its efforts to mobilize the international community, the European Union and the United States in order to obtain a fair sentence from another court," Mr Tsonev said.
The doctors, held for the past five years, told judges that their confessions were extracted under duress, while two Bulgarians said they were forced to sign statements in Arabic that they could not understand.
The verdicts were seen as crucial for the international standing of Libya which has been moving to rejoin the world community since it agreed in December to disarm its weapons of mass destruction programmes.
EC president Romano Prado said during Mr Qadhafi's visit to Brussels that a fair trial was a condition for Libya to join the EU's partnership with countries of the Mediterranean basin.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Wednesday that Washington had also been pressing Libya for the release of the seven health workers. US-Libyan ties have improved dramatically since Tripoli's renunciation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, with US diplomats now present in the Libyan capital for the first time in more than 20 years.
Mr Qadhafi said in 2001 that the case might involve a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or Israeli Mossad plot to experiment with the HIV virus. But the lawyers for the defendants have said their clients are being used as scapegoats for inadequate sterilization of instruments at the paediatric hospital in Benghazi before the Bulgarians and the Palestinian arrived in 1998. -AFP
