Libyan AIDS trial
again delayed

The retrial of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor originally convicted and sentenced to death for allegedly deliberately infecting 426 Libyan children with HIV has been delayed again and is now set to begin June 13. The retrial was expected to begin last week. A Libyan court in December voided the initial guilty verdicts and subsequent death sentences handed down in May 2004 and ordered the health care providers to stand trial again. The six have been imprisoned since 1999. Some of the health workers say they were tortured while imprisoned to wring false confessions from them. AIDS experts testified at the original trial that the HIV infections that had occurred at a hospital in Benghazi, Libya, were likely due to poor sanitary conditions at the facility and the reuse of needles and other medical equipment. Experts also testified that the infections occurred before the health workers arrived at the hospital. Because several European countries have since contributed to a fund to provide medical care to the infected children, legal experts expect the health care workers to be freed after the retrial. (The Advocate)