LIBYA. FIVE BULGARIAN MEDICS AND PALESTINIAN DOCTOR SENTENCED TO DEATH

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. Defence lawyers said they would appeal the sentences. The medics had pleaded not guilty, insisting they were not to blame for the epidemic.
"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.More than 40 of the children have died since 1999, adding to already heated emotions in both countries over the case.
Families of the medics were stunned and were not willing to talk to the media. But 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.
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.
"Libyan authorities did not want to reach the truth about the epidemic, and I continue to stress that the Bulgarians are not to blame," Stankov said. Libya, which has a legal system based on Italian code and Islamic law, has shooting and hanging as its official methods of execution. The last execution to be carried out in the country was in 1997.