Court Clears Libyan Police in Bulgarians' AIDS Torture Case

Today in Tripoli, judge Abdallah Aoun acquitted 10 police officers accused of having used torture to extract confessions from six medics. The five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were convicted in May 2004 and sentenced to death for allegedly infecting more than 380 children with HIV. The medics, who have been imprisoned for six years, blame the infections on poor hygiene at a Benghazi children's hospital. In January, they pressed torture charges against nine Libyan police officers and a military doctor. "There is no torture in Libya. The West wants to politicize the affair but we left it in the hands of the law," said one of the accused, Jomaa al-Meshri, at the end of the trial, which began on January 25. The Libyan high court is set to decide on November 15 whether to hear the medics' appeal of their death sentences.

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