LIBYA. DEATH PENALTY SOUGHT IN HIV CASE

Libyan prosecutor Omar Abdulkhaleq demanded the death penalty for five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor on trial for the second time on charges that they infected hundreds of children with the HIV virus.
"The act was cruel, criminal and inhuman. It's a human catastrophe," prosecutor Abdulkhaleq told the Tripoli court, adding that 53 of the 430 children infected had subsequently died.
"We demand the death penalty for the accused."
A previous trial of the six, who have been detained since 1999, ended with their conviction on charges they intentionally infected 426 children with HIV when they worked in a hospital in Benghazi in the late 1990s.
In December 2005, the supreme court overturned the convictions, which had resulted in sentences of death by firing squad, and sent the case back to a lower court. The retrial began in May 2006.
The medics, Palestinian doctor Ashraf Alhajouj and Bulgarians Snezhana Dimitrova, Nasya Nenova, Valentina Siropolu, Christiana Valcheva and Valia Cherveniashka denied the charges in both their first and second trials and have repeatedly testified that they were tortured to make them confess.