EU. LIBYA URGED TO RELEASE BULGARIAN NURSES

the European Union appealed to Libya to free the five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor condemned to death after being found guilty of infecting 426 children with the HIV virus at the Benghazi paediatric hospital. In a press release issued in Brussels on behalf of the European Council, Luxembourg's deputy minister for European affairs, Nicolas Schmit, urged Tripoli to review the evidence against the convicts so as to release them. The nurses and Palestinian doctor had already spent five years in preventive prison when they were handed the death penalty in May 2004. During the trial, the accused had stated that their confessions were obtained through torture.