Editorial Bear

Libya court to deliver nurses' HIV case verdict
Sunday December 17, 03:17 PM

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor could face the firing squad if a Libyan court convicts them on Tuesday on charges of deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with the virus that causes AIDS.

Concluding a re-trial regarded by the outside world as a test of justice in Libya, the court will make a decision that, either way, is likely to have repercussions on the north African country's gradual rapprochement with the West.

The six are accused of intentionally infecting 426 Libyan children with HIV at a hospital in Benghazi in the late 1990s. The prosecution has demanded the death penalty.

"We are fully confident that the accused group is criminal and will be convicted," Ramadan Faitori, a spokesman for the HIV-infected children's families, told Reuters.

Defence lawyer Othman Bizanti told Reuters: "No one can predict the verdict. A just verdict would represent the real and legal truth, which we presented to the court in our pleading."

The medics were convicted in a 2004 trial and sentenced to death by firing squad. But the supreme court quashed the ruling last year and ordered the case be returned to a lower court.

Rights groups the world over have rallied to the medics' defence to stop what they say may be a miscarriage of justice.

But in Benghazi, where more than 50 of the infected children have died, there is profound public anger against the nurses and international efforts to free them.

LIBYAN MEDIA WANTS GUILTY VERDICT

State-controlled media want a guilty verdict for the six, who have been in detention since 1999.

"We say to everyone: Our children's blood is precious," Aljamahirya newspaper wrote.
Al-Shams newspaper wrote: "It's very difficult to understand the stance of those in solidarity with the accused."

"Who deserves greater reason for solidarity -- The children who are dying without having committed any offence, or those in white coats who distributed death and wiped the smile from the lips of hundreds of families?"

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State David Welch, who helped negotiate a full resumption of diplomatic relations between the United States and Libya, arrived in Tripoli on Friday and discussed "issues which hinder improvements in relations" with Libyan officials, the Libyan news agency Jana reported.

It gave no details. Welch has previously said a way should be found for the nurses to return home.

The case has hampered Tripoli's process of rapprochement with the West, which moved up a gear when it abandoned its pursuit of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in 2003.

But analysts say freeing the defendants would put the focus on alleged negligence and poor hygiene in Libyan hospitals, which western scientists say are the real culprits in the case.

Bizanti has said that in 1997 -- a year before the nurses came to Libya -- about 207 cases of HIV infection had been found in Benghazi that had not resulted in any legal proceedings. He has questioned why the authorities have not followed them up.

In June 2005 a Libyan court acquitted nine Libyan policemen and a doctor of torturing the medics.

Washington backs Bulgaria and the European Union in saying the medics are innocent. Libya has proposed compensation which it says would open a way for a pardon and the medics' release.

Sofia and its allies reject that proposal.

It's just been confirmed that all 6 have been found guilty by the Libyan court.

How utterly horrific. The accusation that these six medics deliberately infected nearly 500 children is ridiculous. Washington and the EU both confirm that and it's fairly obvious that the real culprit has to be the diabolical hygiene conditions in the Libyan hospitals. Over 200 similar infections occurred in the year before these medics arrived. Yet in the interest of political expediency and in order to stir up further mistrust between the first world and the middle east, Libya has 'found' these six people guilty.

They've already been incarcerated in Libya since 1999 and tortured by the police for their alleged crimes. Shortly, they'll be executed by firing squad.

I find it ironic that Libya can quantify such a disgusting abuse of justice, yet still remain vocal in it's accusations of human rights abuses by the west in Iraq.

Unfortunately, though, this seems to be the state of fundamentalist Middle Eastern politics. There is no democracy. There is no truth. There can never be any peace. And while these countries wallow in the misery created by their fundamentalist Muslim dictatorships, we in the west berate ourselves introspectively for denying our enemies any of the rights we're lucky enough to enjoy ourselves.

As much as a disagree with Gitmo and imprisoning suspected terrorists without trial, I think putting people into 'stress positions' and flushing korans down the toilet pales in comparison to deliberately fabricating criminal charges, painfully torturing prisoners for seven years and then lining them up against a brick wall. Bang.

Over in the West, I think our prickling humanitarian conscience is symptomatic of our stronger moral convictions. I'm not suggesting that we should ever condone stepping on the basic human rights and priviledges we enjoy - but we should acknowledge that we will never be fighting on a level playing field while countries like Libya are still so willing to murder innocents to support this ideological jihad against freedom, democracy, justice and peace.