Tripoli | Monday
A TWO-year trial of six Bulgarians accused of deliberately killing Libyan children by infecting them with the HIV virus folded on Sunday because of lack of evidence that they had threatened state security.
A decision by the Tripoli court trying the case to refer it back to state prosecutors for reconsideration and eventual judgement before an ordinary court was welcomed in Bulgaria as probably ruling out the death penalty for the accused.
“After deliberating, the people’s court, the jurisdiction which tries cases of endangering state security, has declared itself unqualified”, the presiding judge ruled at the end of a half-hour public session.
“The court has decided to refer the case back to the prosecution, because this matter is not included in its prerogatives and it must be tried before a criminal court,” the judge said.
Five Bulgarian nurses and a doctor are accused, along with a Palestinian doctor who worked with them at a paediatric hospital in the northern city of Benghazi, of deliberately injecting 393 children in their care with blood products infected with the HIV virus.
Twenty-three children are reported to have died already.
The accused, charged with “premeditated murder to undermine the security of Libya”, all pleaded not guilty. They had been imprisoned in Tripoli for three years before being bailed to house arrest on February 5.
Eight Libyans are accused of negligence in the trial, which started on February 7, 2000. The verdict had already been put off twice, in September and December last year.
The Bulgarians were “confused” by Sunday’s decision by the Tripoli court and did not know what was going to happen to them, Bulgarian radio reported in the capital Sophia.
They were quoted as saying they wanted “everything to end and that they understand that we are innocent,” the radio report said.
Reaction to the decision was swift from Bulgaria, where there was hope the state security charges had been dropped altogether, and that the spectre of capital punishment had been lifted.
“The trial will be conducted by an ordinary court which implies a lifting of the most serious accusations. I am becoming more and more optimistic on the issue of the trial,” Bulgarian Justice Minister Anton Stankov said.
“It is an encouraging decision, raising the possibility of lifting the harsher accusations” against the defendants, Foreign Minister Solomon Passi also said. Passi stressed the “enormous role” the son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, Seif al-Islam, who is head of the Gaddafi charity foundation, had played in this decision and in securing the Bulgarians’ release from jail.
Bulgarian President Gueorgui Parvanov, meanwhile, said the “trial against the Bulgarians is complex and its postponement expresses the Libyan goodwill to establish the truth.”
European diplomats, relatives of the accused and journalists were among those attending Sunday’s hearing.
Afterwards defence lawyer Othman al-Bizanti told journalists the new trial will kick off in one or two months in Benghazi. It was unclear which of the remaining charges they will face in a new trial.
He said the Bulgarians would stay under house arrest, where they were moved after the intervention of the Gaddafi foundation, pending the opening of a new case against them. – AFP