Five Nurses and A Doctor Sentenced to Death in Lybia HIV Row
10:28 PM, December 19th 2006
by Ion C
Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor are to be shot by a firing squad, a Lybian court decided. They deliberately infected 426 children with the HIV virus, said the verdict.
"We are going to urge the Libyan political leadership to engage in the process," said Bulgaria's foreign minister and deputy prime minister, Ivailo Kalfin, from Washington, where he met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hours after the verdict was announced, reports IHT.
Libya's foreign minister said it was now up to Libya's Supreme Court. "Libya will never deal with such pressure from any side - from America, from Europe, from anywhere," Abdurrahman Shalgham said. "No-one can intervene in our justice - no-one. Even our leader, Colonel Qaddafi, can't intervene. That should be quite clear."
EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini expressed his shock at the verdict, while the White House said it was "disappointed". "France deplores this verdict," said Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy, adding that his government was "fundamentally opposed" to the death penalty.
It all began in 1998, when children at the Al Fateh Children's Hospital in Benghazi began to test positive for HIV in unusually large numbers. The following investigation found the culprits were a team of Bulgarian nurses. Dozens of Bulgarian medical workers were arrested, and a videotaped search of one nurse's apartment turned up vials of H.I.V.-tainted blood.
One nurse, Kristiyana Vulcheva, later allegedly confessed that the vials were given to her by a British friend who was working for the KBR subsidiary of Halliburton at the time. The nurse was quoted in an intelligence report as saying that she and her colleagues used the vials to infect the children. Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi subsequently charged that the health care workers had acted on the orders of the United States CIA and Israel's intelligence agency, Mossad.
However, international AIDS experts such as Luc Montagnier, the French virologist whose team is among those who discovered the HIV virus, found that the virus most likely predated the nurses' arrival and was probably spread through the use of contaminated needles. On Dec. 6, too late for use in the trial, Nature magazine published an analysis of HIV and hepatitis virus samples from the children. Using changes in the genetic information of HIV over time as a "molecular clock," analysts concluded the virus was contracted before the six defendants arrived at the hospital, reports AP.
The nurses were previously sentenced to death in 2004, but the Supreme Court quashed the ruling after protests over the fairness of the trial.
As for the nurses' confessions, it is claimed that two of them did so under torture. "The fact that the true reason, according to all the scientific evidence, for this horrific case of hospital infection is poor hygienic conditions in the hospital that predate the arrival of the nurses is really the tragedy of the case," Susannah Sirkin, deputy director of Physicians for Human Rights said by telephone to IHT from her group's offices in Cambridge, Mass.
The parents of the infected children welcomed the news. "Justice has been done. We are happy," Subhy Abdullah, whose daughter Mona, 7, died from Aids contracted at the hospital, told Reuters news agency. "They should be executed quickly."
"God is great!" yelled Ibrahim Mohammed al-Aurabi, the father of an infected child, as soon as the presiding judge finished reading the verdict. "Long live the Libyan judiciary!"
Tripoli has demanded 10 million euros ($13.11 million) for each infected child's family to commute the death sentence. Bulgaria and its allies rejected the offer, saying it would admit guilt.
10:28 PM, December 19th 2006
by Ion C
Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor are to be shot by a firing squad, a Lybian court decided. They deliberately infected 426 children with the HIV virus, said the verdict.
"We are going to urge the Libyan political leadership to engage in the process," said Bulgaria's foreign minister and deputy prime minister, Ivailo Kalfin, from Washington, where he met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hours after the verdict was announced, reports IHT.
Libya's foreign minister said it was now up to Libya's Supreme Court. "Libya will never deal with such pressure from any side - from America, from Europe, from anywhere," Abdurrahman Shalgham said. "No-one can intervene in our justice - no-one. Even our leader, Colonel Qaddafi, can't intervene. That should be quite clear."
EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini expressed his shock at the verdict, while the White House said it was "disappointed". "France deplores this verdict," said Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy, adding that his government was "fundamentally opposed" to the death penalty.
It all began in 1998, when children at the Al Fateh Children's Hospital in Benghazi began to test positive for HIV in unusually large numbers. The following investigation found the culprits were a team of Bulgarian nurses. Dozens of Bulgarian medical workers were arrested, and a videotaped search of one nurse's apartment turned up vials of H.I.V.-tainted blood.
One nurse, Kristiyana Vulcheva, later allegedly confessed that the vials were given to her by a British friend who was working for the KBR subsidiary of Halliburton at the time. The nurse was quoted in an intelligence report as saying that she and her colleagues used the vials to infect the children. Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi subsequently charged that the health care workers had acted on the orders of the United States CIA and Israel's intelligence agency, Mossad.
However, international AIDS experts such as Luc Montagnier, the French virologist whose team is among those who discovered the HIV virus, found that the virus most likely predated the nurses' arrival and was probably spread through the use of contaminated needles. On Dec. 6, too late for use in the trial, Nature magazine published an analysis of HIV and hepatitis virus samples from the children. Using changes in the genetic information of HIV over time as a "molecular clock," analysts concluded the virus was contracted before the six defendants arrived at the hospital, reports AP.
The nurses were previously sentenced to death in 2004, but the Supreme Court quashed the ruling after protests over the fairness of the trial.
As for the nurses' confessions, it is claimed that two of them did so under torture. "The fact that the true reason, according to all the scientific evidence, for this horrific case of hospital infection is poor hygienic conditions in the hospital that predate the arrival of the nurses is really the tragedy of the case," Susannah Sirkin, deputy director of Physicians for Human Rights said by telephone to IHT from her group's offices in Cambridge, Mass.
The parents of the infected children welcomed the news. "Justice has been done. We are happy," Subhy Abdullah, whose daughter Mona, 7, died from Aids contracted at the hospital, told Reuters news agency. "They should be executed quickly."
"God is great!" yelled Ibrahim Mohammed al-Aurabi, the father of an infected child, as soon as the presiding judge finished reading the verdict. "Long live the Libyan judiciary!"
Tripoli has demanded 10 million euros ($13.11 million) for each infected child's family to commute the death sentence. Bulgaria and its allies rejected the offer, saying it would admit guilt.
