Justice coming Libya’s way?

In the weekend it was announced that a Libyan court dismissed defamation cases brought against the five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who are being held in a Libyan prison after being accused and sentenced for deliberately having infected more than 400 children with HIV virus while working in a hospital in Benghazi, Libya.

The six were arrested in 1999 and sentenced to death in 2004 for the alleged crimes and are now awaiting the outcome of their final appeal. The current case stems from comments made by the six medics claiming that their confessions had been obtained through the use of torture. The six say that they had been mistreated by several officials and named one police officer and a doctor among their torturers. The police officer and doctor later sued the six medicals for libel but the case was thrown out by the court.

Although Libya has in the last couple of years shown intentions to “normalise” its policies and approached the West, the shameful treatment of the six medics leaves a lot to be desired for. An independent report carried out by Luc Montagnier (a French scientist who helped discovering HIV) cleared the six of any wrongdoing and instead laid the blame on poor hospital hygiene – as did two other independent reports all commissioned by the Libyan government. However, it appears that the six medics were chosen as easy foreign targets to cover for blatant shortcomings in the Libyan health service. It has even been argued that the city of Benghazi, traditionally a stronghold for political opponents of Muammar Qaddafi, was targeted by the leader through the withholding of medical supplies.

While European governments apparently have been attempting to secure the release of the six behind the scenes, as well as accepting some of the infected children for treatment in Europe, it can only be hoped that this recent ruling proves a precursor for the final appeal and justice will be done.

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