Libyan AIDS trial
set to begin Thursday

The retrial of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor convicted and sentenced to death for allegedly deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV is set to begin on Thursday. An appeals court in December overturned the initial conviction and death sentences and ordered a new trial. The health care workers were arrested in 1999 and charged with deliberately infecting hundreds of children at a Benghazi hospital with HIV. Some of the workers say they were tortured while imprisoned in order to wring false confessions from them. Witnesses testified at the original trial that the children had been infected with HIV before the health workers arrived in Libya, likely because of poor sanitary conditions at the facility. (The Advocate)