Libya:Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor could face a firing squad if a Libyan court convicts them tomorrow on charges of deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with the virus that causes Aids.
Concluding a retrial regarded by the outside world as a test of justice in Libya, the court will make a decision that, either way, is likely to have repercussions on the north African country's gradual rapprochement with the West.
The six are accused of intentionally infecting 426 Libyan children with HIV at a hospital in Benghazi in the late 1990s. The prosecution has demanded the death penalty.
"We are fully confident that the accused group is criminal and will be convicted," said Ramadan Faitori, a spokesman for the HIV-infected children's families.
Defence lawyer Othman Bizanti said: "No one can predict the verdict. A just verdict would represent the real and legal truth, which we presented to the court in our pleading." The medics were convicted in a 2004 trial and sentenced to death by firing squad. But the supreme court quashed the ruling last year and ordered the case be returned to a lower court.
Rights groups around the world have rallied to the medics' defence. But in Benghazi, where more than 50 of the infected children have died, there is profound public anger against the nurses and international efforts to free them. State-controlled media want a guilty verdict for the six, who have been in detention since 1999. "We say to everyone: Our children's blood is precious," Aljamahirya newspaper wrote.
US assistant secretary of state David Welch arrived in Tripoli on Friday and discussed "issues which hinder improvements in relations" with Libyan officials.
Analysts say freeing the defendants would put the focus on alleged negligence and poor hygiene in Libyan hospitals, which western scientists say are the real culprits in the case.
Mr Bizanti has said that in 1997 - a year before the nurses came to Libya - about 207 cases of HIV infection had been found in Benghazi that had not resulted in any legal proceedings. He has questioned why the authorities have not followed them up.
In June 2005 a Libyan court acquitted nine Libyan policemen and a doctor of torturing the medics.
- (Reuters)