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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: michael97123 who wrote (219011)	2/17/2007 11:23:06 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Recently in Libya, many health professionals were sentenced for an AIDS outbreak. If I was a health professional, why would I volunteer to go to places such as this? Bulgarian nurses on death row in Libya at a low ebb: lawyer focus-fen.net 13 February 2007 \| 13:12 \| FOCUS News Agency Tripoli. Five Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death in Libya in an AIDS epidemic case are awaiting a final verdict from the supreme court "with a great deal of worry," their lawyer told AFP. "Their morale is very low," said Othman al-Bizanti, who last saw his clients more than 10 days ago. "They are very worried after being sentenced to death. They have been living for the last eight years in psychological torture and daily suffering," he said Monday. On February 9, 1999, the five nurses and a Palestinian doctor were arrested after hundreds of children at the Benghazi pediatric hospital where they worked contracted HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The six defendants were first sentenced to death in 2004, but then the supreme court ordered a retrial and a new death sentence was issued on December 19 last year . The Supreme Court will hear their latest appeal in about six weeks. The nurses and the doctor deny the charges and have been supported in their appeal by international experts, including the co-discoverer of the HIV/AIDS virus Luc Montagnier, who said the infection of the children was due to poor hospital hygiene. Bizanti said he was sure his clients will be exonerated. "I am optimistic and we have confidence in Libyan justice," he said. "They were forced to confess to the crime because they were tortured." He said the nurses were incarcerated in comparative comfort at the Jdaida prison, seven kilometres (four miles) east of Tripoli and no requests for visits by the lawyer or relatives have been refused. The nurses are also embroiled in a second case brought by a police officer and a member of the investigative committee who are suing them for defamation over their torture claims. The nurses said they were beaten, given electrical shocks and threatened with dogs by Jomaa al-Meshri and Abdel Majid al-Shoul, who in response are each suing them for five million dinars (around three million dollars). Despite his optimism, Bizanti has not ruled out the possibility that the Supreme Court will uphold the death sentence. "In this case, the Supreme Judicial Council -- the highest judicial authority in Libya -- can overturn the sentence or grant a pardon," he said. Bizanti declined to discuss the possibility that the matter could be resolved in negotiations between a foundation presided over by Seif al-Islam -- the son of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi -- and the Bulgarian authorities. Islam told the Bulgarian daily 24 Hours last month that the nurses would not be put to death. "I guarantee that we will not execute them," he said. "Believe me, we are approaching a solution." The sentencing to death of the nurses and the doctor has been fiercely criticised by Bulgaria and the international community and threatens to derail Libya's attempts to normalise its relations with the European Union.