ITALY. SENATOR APPEALS TO GOVERNMENT TO URGENTLY UNDERTAKE ACTIONS IN SUPPORT OF BULGARIANS ON DEATH ROW IN LIBYA

Tana de Zulueta, a senator for the Green Party group in Italy's senate, sent a parliamentary request to the Italian Government for urgent actions to help the Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death in Libya. De Zulueta officially asked the Government what measures it intended to undertake in its relations with Tripoli to stop the witch-hunt against the Bulgarian medics.
Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were sentenced to death by the Benghazi Criminal Court in May 2004 after two of them were tortured into confessing to deliberate HIV infection of several hundred Libyan children.
In her appeal to the Government, Zulueta reminded that the Bulgarian nurses were tortured in Libyan prisons. According to her, the medics were not guilty and their sentence was due to propaganda by Libyan politicians and media.
De Zulueta asked her Government to apply the recommendation of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) of October 6, 2005, by which immediate freeing of the sentenced persons and protection of human rights by Libyan authorities was demanded.