Following up on last weeks Oread Daily story concerning the plight of the Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian doctor sentenced to death in Libya for allegedly infecting hundreds of children with the HIV virus, a Libyan court yesterday issued a decision to delay a ruling on an appeal filed by the health care workers. JANA quoted the Chairman of the Peoples Committee for the Society for the Care of the Injected children after the court's decision to postpone the sentence "We respect the court's decision of this case, but in the same time we hope the others would respect it also".
The Pakistani newspaper DAWN reported that, “Angry scuffles erupted outside the court at the judge’s decision, with families of some children trying to get into the Tripoli courtroom and forcing officials to shut the doors to keep them out. Chants of “Kill them or kill us” echoed round the building as security forces tried to control the demonstrators, some of whom vented their wrath against Othman al-Bizanti, the nurses’ defense lawyer.”
The decision was welcomed by the European Union. EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner told a news briefing, "I welcome this decision. It indicates that the Libyan Supreme Court accepts that the original trial needs additional consideration and that the death sentences ... cannot be confirmed."
Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passy saw the court's delay as a sign it "is starting to listen more carefully to the arguments of the defense". "We hope to have our people back in Bulgaria this year ... They will have to stay six months more in jail for reasons which they themselves, and we ourselves in Bulgaria, do not understand," he told the same news briefing in Luxembourg. Although not happy with the length of the delay until the new appeal date, Ferrero-Waldner said the outcome could have been far more serious. "There was a very difficult moment today, where there could have been a death penalty for six people," she said.
Not everyone was quite so taken with the decision of the Court.
The Human Rights group, Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) was dismayed by the delay which requires the health care workers to languish in a Libyan prison. A statement released by the group said in part, “We are disappointed to learn that the Libyan Supreme Court has delayed an opportunity to release the nurses and physician accused of intentionally infecting children with HIV. This is especially troubling in light of the medics’ allegations that their confessions were extracted under torture. These medics have already served five and half years in prison. They were arrested in 1999 and not tried until 2004. The announcement postponing the court ruling until November 15 means six more months of confinement for the medics.”
PSR noted that Professor Luc Montagnier, a co-discoverer of the virus that causes AIDS and Italian microbiologist Vittorio Colizzi sampled viruses from the infected children in 2004 and determined that many of the children had been infected with HIV before the arrival of the foreign nurses and doctor in 1998. Further, the presence of co-contaminants Hepatitis B and C suggests that the victims had been infected by unsanitary conditions at the hospital rather than by any deliberate action. Sources: JANA, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Reuters Alert, DAWN, AFP
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