Eminent scientists support jailed medics in Libya

Oct 26 2006

The case of the six medics currently on trial in Libya on charges that they deliberatly infected more than 400 children with HIV 1998, has hit international headlines due to the action of a group of prominent American scientists.

The scientists in a letter to a prestigious British science journal have written in support of the Palestinian doctor and five Bulgarian nurses on trial for their life.

The scientists say that the Libyan court has relied on confessions extracted under torture, and that HIV was already present in the hospital where the patients were treated.

They say the most reasonable explanation is that poor infection control practices, including the lack of sterile, disposable injecting equipment, led to the spread of HIV and other diseases.

The six face the death penalty if convicted.

They were tried and found guilty and sentenced to death two years ago but that verdict was later overturned on appeal.

But they are now facing the death penalty once again despite many experts saying the evidence against them is flawed.

Luc Montagnier the scientist who first discovered the HIV virus says he found many of the children were infected with a different strain of HIV to the one suggested by the prosecution, and they also had hepatitis, indicating that poor hygiene was common at the hospital.

The six have now been incarcerated in Libyan jails for the past seven years, but continue to maintain their innocence, saying poor hygiene at the Benghazi hospital where they worked was to blame for the children's infections.

In both trials the court has refused to accept these findings which has prompted the science journal Nature to take the unusual step of obtaining documents key to the prosecution's case.

The documents have since been translated into English, and assessed by AIDS experts from six countries and the overwhelming consensus is that the Libyan evidence is hopelessly flawed.

According to Professor Janine Jagger, an epidemiologist who specialises in workplace exposure to HIV, nothing in the prosecution's case suggests the children were deliberately infected.

Professor Jagger also says there is solid evidence, which the court has refused to hear, that some of the children were HIV-positive long before the foreign staff joined the hospital.

Expectations by medical experts outside Libya when the retrial was ordered last year, that the case would be dismissed, proved to be unfounded and in August, the chief prosecutor again demanded the death penalty if the six are convicted.

British scientists too have entered the fray with a letter to The Times this month from such eminent scientists as Professor Lord Rees, President of the Royal Society and Professor Ian Gilmore, President of the Royal College of Physicians, requesting that the United Nations, Arab countries, the U.S. and European Union exert their influence on President Gaddafi to release the six.

The hearings are due to resume next week.