The retrial of six foreign medics accused of infecting hundreds of Libyan children with the virus that causes Aids was adjourned to October on Tuesday after a defence lawyer failed to show up at court.
”The court held a very brief session and swiftly postponed the trial to October 12 because the lawyer of the Palestinian doctor was absent,” said lawyer Abdallah al Maghribi.
”Libyan law bans court hearings if there is no lawyer to assist a defendant,” he added, naming the absent lawyer as Touhami Toumi.
A Libyan prosecutor is demanding the death penalty for five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor on trial for a second time on charges they infected 426 children in their care at a Benghazi hospital in the late 1990s with HIV.
A previous trial of the six, who have been detained since 1999, ended with their conviction and sentences to death by firing squad.
But in December 2005, the supreme court overturned the convictions and sent the case back to a lower court. The retrial began in May 2006 but has been delayed since then.
The six defendants deny the accusations and the defence argues that there were as many as 1 500 HIV cases in Benghazi before the hospital infections occurred.
The case has been a hurdle to full normalisation of relations between Libya and the West — in particular the United States — amid warming diplomatic and trade ties after decades of hostility and ostracism.
Washington has long backed Bulgaria and the European Union in saying the medics, in jail in Libya since 1999, are innocent.
Lawyer Toumi and court officials were not immediately available to comment on his absence.
”The court will send him a letter to ask him to attend the next hearing. If he fails to answer positively the court will name a lawyer for the doctor and the retrial will resume on October 12 with the named lawyer,” Maghribi told Reuters. – Reuters