| Death sentence for doctors who kill children Libya, which is just establishing relations with the West, presented an unpleasant surprise to the international community. Five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor, who worked in Libya under a contract, were sentenced yesterday by a Benghazi court to death “for deliberately infecting children with AIDS.” Another Bulgarian, anesthesiologist Zdravko Georgiev, was sentenced to four years in prison. But he was immediately released, since he had already served that sentence. The case of five nurses and two doctors has been dragging on since February 1999. All this time they were in prison, where they were accused of infecting 426 children with HIV in a pediatric hospital in Benghazi.
Sloppy doctors used untested materials for blood transfusions. Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, in the then conditions of acute confrontation with Washington and Tel Aviv, did not exclude “the possibility of a conspiracy organized by the CIA or the Israeli Mossad.” These statements smacked of cheap populism, although the threat of the use of HIV-infected blood by terrorists and intelligence services is no longer a fantasy. Last month, Israeli intelligence agencies announced that they had foiled a terrorist attack using an explosive mixture allegedly laced with the HIV virus. “AIDS is a real weapon of mass destruction,” says Mervyn Silverman, chairman of the American National AIDS Conference.
But regarding the case in Benghazi, European experts are sure: the cause of the tragedy was a violation of sanitary and hygienic standards in the hospital. The prosecution defends the theory of profit. Allegedly, the wife of a Bulgarian pediatrician took blood for a dollar from African children with AIDS, which her husband then used to replace it with benign blood sold for sale. According to another version, doctors infected children as part of an experiment to find a cure for AIDS. Be that as it may, 46 children have already died from AIDS, 380 are infected with HIV and are unlikely to survive.
Seif al-Islam, the son of Muammar Gaddafi, acted as an independent observer at the trial. He guaranteed the “impartiality of justice.” But the defense claims that the Bulgarians were beaten, sexually assaulted and given electric shocks by the police. That's why they signed the confession. The defendants will appeal. Sofia is fighting to save its citizens. It is supported by human rights organizations, the European Union, NATO and the United States. Speaker of the Bulgarian Parliament Ognyan Gerdzhikov hopes that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi “out of the principles of humanism and justice will not allow the sentence to be carried out.”
The Bulgarian authorities hope that Gaddafi is trying to bring Libya out of international isolation. In December 2003, the Libyan leader abandoned the development of weapons of mass destruction and support for international terrorism. Gaddafi's recognition of Libya's responsibility for the airliner bombings in 1988-1989 and the payment of more than $4 billion in compensation to the relatives of the victims put an end to the almost 25-year boycott of Libya by the West. In this atmosphere, the execution of the death sentence could tarnish Libya's reputation in the eyes of Europe, where capital punishment is not used. However, Gaddafi can refer to the experience of the United States, where executions continue in many states. Katerina LABETSKAYA |
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