SOFIA, Sept 17 (AFP) - The trial of six Bulgarians who face the death penalty if found guilty of deliberately infecting nearly 400 Libyan children with AIDS has been postponed again, Bulgarian television reported Sunday.
The trial will resume on October 7. It is the fifth postponement since the it opened in February.
The six Bulgarians, five nurses and a doctor, as well as a Palastinian doctor, stand accused of "triggering an AIDS epidemic by injecting contaminated products" and premeditated murder designed "to sap Libya's strength".
Eight Libyans have been accused of "negligence" in the same case.
The trial was postponed following requests from lawyers to allow them to better acquaint themselves with the charges, reported a Bulgarian television correspondent, the only foreign journalist allowed access to the proceedings.
According to the Bulgarians' Libyan lawyer, Othmane al-Bizanti, this will be the last postponement of the trial. He requested Sunday that the court authorise a hearing of the French professor Jean-Luc Montagnier, who discovered the AIDS virus.
Bulgarian has been lobbying Egypt to support endeavours to ensure a fair and objective trial.
The Libyan minister for foreign affairs, Abdel Shalkam, assured his Bulgarian counterpart Nadejda Mikhailova when he met her last week in New York at a UN General Assembly that the Libyan authorities "had no prejudices" regarding the trial.
Bulgarian Foreign Ministry spokesman Radko Vlaikov has said the accusation was "absurd" since there were cases of AIDS transmission at the pediatric hospital where the accused worked, both before and after their time there.
Prime Minister Ivan Kostov thanked the Bulgarian media Sunday for following his request for "tolerance" in what they have written about Libya.
000917
AF000956
Copyright © AFP or Agence France-Presse, 2000 - All Rights Reserved. AFP articles contained on the AEGiS web site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without AFP's prior written permission. You may make one copy of each article for your personal, non-commercial use only; more copies would require AFP's prior written permission.. http://www.afp.com/
©1990, 2000 - ÆGiS. ÆGiS presents published material, reprinted with permission and neither endorses nor opposes any material. All materials appearing on ÆGIS are protected by copyright as a collective work or compilation under U.S. copyright and other laws and are the property of ÆGIS and the Sisters of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, or the party credited as the provider of the content.