THE day of judgement has finally been set for six Bulgarian health workers accused of deliberately infecting 426 Libyan children with HIV. They will hear their fate by 19 December, a Libyan court ruled last week.
Human rights observers say the workers, who all face the death penalty, have been made scapegoats to cover up the real cause of the infections 鈥� poor hygiene at the Benghazi hospital where the children were treated in 1998. Fifty-two have since died.
鈥淭he Libyan courts have disallowed crucial scientific and circumstantial evidence鈥�
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Libyan president Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi is now under intense international pressure to order a retrial or free the Bulgarians. Eminent scientists claim the Libyan courts have disallowed crucial scientific and circumstantial evidence pointing to the innocence of the Bulgarians, including a 2003 report by Luc Montagnier, the French scientist who co-discovered HIV. It blamed the reuse of syringes for the infections, which began before the Bulgarians arrived.
Last week, 114 Nobel prizewinners appealed directly to Gaddafi for a fair trial in a letter online in the journal Nature. 鈥淚鈥檓 told that 19 December is the latest possible date for the verdict under Libyan law,鈥� says Richard Roberts of New England Biolabs in Ipswich, Massachusetts, and lead author of the letter. 鈥淭hat gives the maximum time possible to negotiate a positive outcome. I believe there will be a lot of extrajudicial activity in the next few weeks.鈥� A separate appeal was launched in Science on 25 October.
