Will Libya take one step forward or two steps back?

Nov 1 2006

A court in Libya has heard the closing remarks for the defence in the case of the six foreign medics accused of deliberating infecting 426 children with HIV at a hospital in Benghazi; 52 have since died of AIDS.

The five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor have been in custody since 1999, and face a possible death sentence.

At the first trial in May 2004 the six were found guilty and sentenced to death by firing squad.

The ensuing international uproar resulted in Libya's supreme court ordering a retrial following an appeal in December 2005.

A series of adjournments since the re-trial began in May, has seen the process drag on, but now a date has been set for the final session, November 4th.

The defence has reiterated that poor hygiene and neglect led to the infection of the children with HIV, and reminded the court that those claims are supported by international scientists who have declared that the epidemic was not through injections but through the re-use of syringes.

Lawyer Touhami Toumi representing the Palestinian doctor said the epidemic in the hospital was not because of deliberate injections (of HIV) but because of poor hygiene, neglect and lack of equipment.

French doctor Luc Montagnier, who first detected the HIV virus, has said it emerged in the Benghazi hospital in 1997, a year before the medics arrived and at the first trial testified that the children were most probably infected through negligence and poor hygiene.

Also a 2003 inquiry by an international specialist at the request of Libyan authorities concluded that the hospital infections were the result of poor hygiene.

Nevertheless the medics were found guilty and sentenced to death.

The six medics have denied the charges in both their first and second trials and have repeatedly testified that they were tortured to make them confess.

Othman Bizanti, a lawyer for the Bulgarian nurses, has told the court torture was used on the accused to force them to make confessions and one of the nurses had tried to commit suicide because of the experience.

Bizanti said that in 1997 before the nurses came to Libya, 207 cases of HIV infection had been found in Benghazi that had never resulted in any legal proceedings, and he questioned why the authorities had not followed them up.

He has demanded the court find the Bulgarians not guilty.

Toumi said the six were imprisoned in substandard conditions, and on one occasion, in the earlier stages of detention, were being confined with police dogs under considerable police pressure.

In June 2005 a Libyan court acquitted nine Libyan policemen and a doctor of torturing the medics.

The case questions Libya's human rights record, which has been seen as a hurdle to improved links with the West, at a time when Washington is in the process of resuming full diplomatic ties with Tripoli after decades of hostility.

To date the court has rejected all demands by lawyers to release the medics on parole, arguing the charges are too serious for the defendants to be free.

Bulgaria has the backing of both the U.S. and the European Union in saying the medics are innocent.

Proposals by Libya for a compensation payment which, the authorities in Tripoli say, would open a way for the pardon and the release of the medics, has been roundly rejected by Bulgaria.

Attempts to train local medical staff and improve conditions at the hospital by EU medical teams appear to have failed as almost all of the children are now being treated in Italy and France, at the expense of the Libyan government.

Lawyers for the families of the infected children have asked for 15 million Libyan dinars (6.1 million pounds) for each child in compensation, the total compensation packet would come to around $4.6 billion.

The hearing has been adjourned until Saturday November 4th when court President Mahmoud Haouissa is expected to hear the prosecution's closing statement and set a date for judgement.

Last week, an international group of physicians and scientists urged Libya to free the medics, citing lack of proof.

The eminent group of U.S., Canadian and European scientists wrote a letter published in the October 25 issue of the U.S. journal Science saying that "convicting a small group of individuals of such an appalling crime as the deliberate infection of 400 innocent children, requires a very high degree of proof".

They said the Libyan court ha chosen to exclude expert testimony from independent scientists and to prevent access to crucial pieces of evidence to test for HIV contamination, while relying instead on 'confessions' extracted under torture and making threats of execution for no co-operation by the accused'.

In December, Britain, Bulgaria, the European Union (EU) and the U.S. created an international fund to help Libya fight AIDS, renovate the Benghazi hospital and compensate victims or their families.