The Court Trial in Libya - Chronology of the events

[bgmontreal]

On May 6 the Criminal Court in Libya sentenced five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor to death by firing squad. They stand accused of deliberately infecting more than 400 Libyan children with the HIV virus. The sixth Bulgarian national, who spent more than five years in prison – Doctor Zdravko Georgiev – was sentenced to four years imprisonment for foreign currency crimes. However, he has already been released because he has served his sentence. Here is a brief chronology of the events.

The six Bulgarian nationals were arrested on February 9 1999. The Bulgarian embassy in Tripoli was informed about their identity one whole month later – on March 7 1999. The court trial against the Bulgarians opened in 2000, one year after they were imprisoned. They were tried by the special People’s Court, which hears particularly heavy crimes against national security. Among the charges raised is conspiracy against the Libyan state. Most of the charges are based on self-confessions made by three of the Bulgarians and the Palestinian Ashraf al-Hadjudj. Some time later these four disavowed the self-confessions, stating they had made them after severe torture. Among the defendants are nine Libyan doctors from the children’s hospital in Benghazi, accused of negligence and malpractice. However, these Libyans were later found innocent by the court.

On February 17 2002 the People’s Court in Libya overruled charges of conspiracy against the state and returned the case to the Chief Prosecutor’s Office. In August the same year the Prosecuting Chamber confirmed the charges against the Bulgarian nationals and the Palestinian, of deliberately infecting children with the HIV virus and submitted the case to the Criminal Court in Benghazi.

On June 13 the Prosecution in Tripoli opened an additional investigation procedure, after the “Gaddafi” foundation found some oversights in the case. The chamber decided there are sufficient grounds for bringing nine Libyan security forces officers to court, accused of having tortured foreign citizens in the course of the preliminary investigation. The Bulgarian medics were issued a certificate by a forensic doctor that they had been tortured while in prison. At the first session of the Criminal Court in Benghazi on July 8 2003 a civil claim for damages to the tune of 15 million Libyan dinars was filed for each of the AIDS-infected children.

On September 3 2003 the court summoned as witness the man who discovered the HIV virus professor Luc Montagne and the Italian virusologist Vittorio Collizzi, who said the AIDS outbreak at the children’s hospital “Al Fatah” was caused by an in-house infection and the infection had already been caused when the six Bulgarian medics began working at the hospital.

On September 12 2003 the UN lifted the sanctions against Libya, adopting a resolution, submitted by the UK and Bulgaria.

On January 26 2004 the legal defense of the Bulgarian defendants submitted written expert opinions by two American scientists. Their findings quoted the in-house infection as the cause of the AIDS infection. Libyan virusologist from Tripoli University Salem al Agiri also backed these findings. However, the prosecutors in the case demanded death penalties for the six Bulgarian nationals and the Palestinian. The legal defense, represented by the Libyan attorney at law Osman Bizanti and his Bulgarian colleague Plamen Yalnazov demanded the acquittal of the defendants. The defense stated the self-confessions signed by some of the defendants were not material evidence and noted the preliminary investigation of the defendants had involved a drastic violation of the Libyan laws and human rights.

The court trial against the Bulgarians, which has been going for five years already, was one of the main issues the European Commission chairman Romano Prodi raised at his meeting with the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in Brussels at the end of the previous month. Prodi expressed confidence the resolution of the “pending issues” between the EU and Tripoli, such as the imprisonment of foreign medics in Libya, would have a favourable outcome. Gaddafi himself said at a joint news conference with Prodi he had intervened in the case in order to make sure the Bulgarians would be tried fairly and justly.

On May 6 2004 the Criminal Court sentenced the five Bulgarian nurses to death, while the security forces officers, who had been accused of having tortured the medics, were triumphant – the court vowed incompetent to issue them sentences.



Written by K. Bugarchev

Translated by I. Videnov

http://www.bnr.bg/RadioBulgaria/Emissio ... +libya.htm