Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of deliberately infecting more than 400 children with HIV were sentenced to death by a Libyan court on Thursday.
Shouts of approval from spectators in the courtroom greeted the verdicts, but there was also swift condemnation from abroad which could jeopardise Libya’s efforts to rehabilitate itself within the international community.
”I thank God for this sentence,” said Abd al-Razek al-Odaibi, the father of one of the infected children. ”If there is a greater sentence than death, I would have wished it for them.”
The sentence will be carried out by firing squad.
Odaibi’s son, six-year-old Akram, who was infected with HIV at the age of 12 months, was with him in court.
The panel of five judges acquitted nine Libyan hospital officials who had been accused in the same case.
A Bulgarian doctor, originally accused of spreading HIV, was instead sentenced to four years imprisonment for changing foreign currency illegally. The alteration of charges against him was not explained in court.
Many observers believe the story of a plot by foreigners to spread HIV was concocted to placate Libyan public opinion and cover up poor hygiene at al-Fateh children’s hospital in the port city of Benghazi.
A total of 426 children are thought to have been infected at the hospital between April 1997 and March 1999. At least 48 have died.
Initially, Libyan officials said the infections were part of a conspiracy by the CIA and Israeli intelligence, but later backed away from that claim.
During the trial, Professor Luc Montagnier, the French Aids expert who first identified HIV, testified that poor hygiene and the re-use of infected medical equipment such as needles were the most likely causes of the infections. He said analysis of blood samples pointed ”strongly against” the possibility that the disease had been spread deliberately.
In reaching its verdict, the court appears to have rejected Professor Montagnier’s evidence in favour of testimony from a group of court-appointed Libyan doctors who said the Bulgarians wilfully infected the children with HIV through blood transfusions.
The case had dragged on for more than five years since the medical staff were arrested in January 1999, but its outcome creates an untimely problem in Libya’s international relations which have been improving as a result of its decision to renounce weapons of mass destruction and the resolution of the Lockerbie affair.
Brian Cowan, the foreign minister of Ireland which holds the EU presidency, told Libya on Thursday of Europe’s ”serious concerns” about the fairness of the trial.
”This is a very negative surprise for us,” EU spokesperson Diego de Ojeda told reporters, ”in particular because the European Union has assessed severe irregularities during the trial in terms of the rights of defence.”
Defendants have complained that they were given electric shocks, beaten on the soles of their feet and threatened with dogs to make them confess. Two of the women say they were sexually abused in police custody. As a result of these allegations, eight members of the Libyan security forces and two civilian employees were charged with torture and put on trial alongside those accused of spreading HIV.
On Thursday, the panel of judges said their court was ”not competent” to consider the torture charges. It was unclear whether this meant the charges had been dropped or would be heard by a different court.
In Libya, capital punishment is prescribed for a wide range of offences, though it is not known how many executions take place.
”We are very shocked by the death sentences,” said Sara Hamood of Amnesty International. ”We are calling on the Libyan authorities to quash them immediately.”
For the first time in 15 years, an Amnesty delegation visited Libya in February and met the leader, Colonel Moammar Gadaffi. Libyan officials told them at the time that they were ”working towards” abolition of the death penalty.
Under Libyan law, death sentences generate an automatic appeal. If an appeal fails, the supreme court would be expected to review the sentences.
Despite the political damage the case is likely to cause, the Libyan foreign minister told the EU on Thursday that courts in Libya were independent and the government could not intervene. – Guardian Unlimited Â