Libyan Hiv Trial Refuses Defendants Bail

Libyan judges retrying five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor on charges of deliberately infecting more than 400 children with the HIV virus today rejected their request to be released on bail.

The decision came in the first session of the new trial at Libya's supreme court, ordered last year after it overturned the death sentences given to the six health workers in 2004.

Judge Mahmoud Hawisa, the presiding judge, rejected the defence team's request to grant bail on the grounds of ill health after hearing prosecution arguments that the defendants might try to flee the country.

The five nurses, Christiana Valcheva, Nasya Nenova, Valentina Siropulo, Valya Chervenyashka and Snezhana Dimitrova, and the Palestinian doctor, Ashraf al-Hazouz, have been in Libyan custody for seven years.

The children were said to have been infected with HIV, the virus that causes Aids, at a hospital in the Libyan city of Benghazi as part of an alleged experiment to find a cure for the disease.

But the European Union, the United States and human rights groups have accused the Libyan authorities of blaming the defendants for poor hygiene practices that they say caused the infections.

The EU and US, which welcomed the order for a retrial, have made it clear that future relations with the Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi depended on the outcome of the case. A lighter sentence is widely expected.

But Colonel Gadhafi is under pressure at home over the case. Relatives of the 426 children involved held angry protests after the order for a new trial.

The ruling for the new trial in December came days after an agreement between the US, EU and Libya to set up a fund to help the families of the infected children. About 50 of the children have died, according to a lawyer for the families.

Mr Hazouz, the doctor, said: "We are also victims like those children but we hope that this tragedy will end soon." He said he had not been allowed to speak to his family for five months.

The human rights group Amnesty International has reported accounts by the women of how they were tortured with electric shocks and beaten until they confessed. Two nurses said they had been raped.

Today's brief session dealt with procedural matters. The court adjourned the trial until June 13.

Tripoli has taken several steps to resume full relations with the US in recent years. In 2003, it agreed to compensate families of the Lockerbie victims and scrapped its nuclear programme, prompting the US to restore diplomatic ties.