A Libyan court sentenced 5 Bulgarian medics and a Palestinian...

A Libyan court sentenced 5 Bulgarian medics and a Palestinian doctor to death by firing squad for deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with the deadly HIV virus, court officials said.
Bulgaria condemned the "unfair and absurd" verdicts and called for a strong reaction from its Western partners - the European Union, NATO and the United States.
Defence lawyers said they would appeal the sentences. The medics had pleaded not guilty, insisting they were not to blame for the epidemic. Scores of relatives of the HIV-infected children took to the streets near the court building in a joyful display.
The health workers, detained in early 1999, were convicted of infecting 426 Libyan children at a Benghazi hospital with blood products contaminated with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
Bulgarians had expected some leniency after Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's recent efforts to renew ties with the West.
"I'm shocked by the verdicts. The government's official position is that we're not going to accept them. Such verdicts are unfair and without grounds," Bulgarian Justice Minister Anton Stankov said in Sofia. In contrast, relatives of the infected children were happy.
"The verdict is fair. What they did is a crime against humanity. They planted a bomb inside our children," said Ramdane Ali Mohamed, whose little sister Hiba died of AIDS.
Parliament Speaker Ognyan Gerdzhikov said he was confident the death sentences would not be carried out.
"First, they can be appealed. Secondly, Libya has not executed death sentences in nine years, and I'd be very surprised if they start now. Thirdly, I expect Gaddafi to act like a humanist to win certain political credit, which he needs from world public opinion," he told national radio.
"It a shocking verdict. My clients expected to be convicted for dereliction of duty and sentenced to prison terms not death," defence lawyer Othmane Bizanti told Reuters, adding that the defendants had 60 days to lodge an appeal. Last year Luc Montagnier, the French doctor credited with first discovering the HIV virus, said the epidemic emerged in the hospital in 1997, a year before the medics arrived, probably due to unsanitary conditions.