On Wednesday (May 5), a special Libyan court sentenced five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death for purposely infecting 426 children with HIV in a Benghazi pediatrics hospital in 1998. The case, which has become something of a cause celebre within the AIDS science and clinical communities, is expected to be appealed.
Authorities arrested the six healthcare workers in 1999 after several dozen children from the hospital became infected with HIV. Two of them issued confessions. Both later claimed the confessions had been issued under duress and no known evidence has been shown to implicate them otherwise.
In a separate case alleging trafficking in foreign currency, three Libyans and a Bulgarian doctor, Zdravko Georgiev, were sentenced to 3 to 4 years in prison. The Bulgarian doctor, whose wife is one of those sentenced to death, was released, because his sentence was less than the time he had already ...
