SOFIA, Aug 21 (AFP) - Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalgham said Wednesday that six Bulgarians accused by a Libyan court of spreading AIDS in the country would get a fair trial.
"These people are guaranteed 100 percent justice. Moreover, we do not want one innocent person to stay in prison," Chalgham said following talks with his Bulgarian counterpart Solomon Passi in Sofia.
"The search for the truth is the sole motive of the trial," he added.
A Libyan court charged six Bulgarians -- five nurses and a doctor -- on June 3, with "provoking an AIDS epidemic through the use of contaminated products", after 393 children were infected with the virus during alleged administration of tainted blood products.
Together with a Palestinian doctor, the six were initially charged with "premeditated murder with the intention of undermining the Libyan state," which could have resulted in the death penalty.
The accused have denied the charges while two of the nurses and the Bulgarian doctor have claimed that their statements to police in Tripoli were extracted through the use of force.
They denied the charges, and the case was thrown out for lack of evidence when it first went to court in February, but the prosecution refiled the charges.
AIDS-related diseases have already killed 23 of the children in the Al-Fateh children's hospital in the eastern city of Benghazi, where the Bulgarians worked.
The Bulgarians are also accused of illegally distilling alcohol, having sex outside marriage and trading currency on the black market.
A Benghazi court met Monday and decided it would announce on August 26 if the accused would be prosecuted or if proceedings would stop, a lawyer for the defendants told AFP Monday.
The court first put off its decision on July 15 and again on August 5.
The visit to Bulgaria by the Libyan foreign minister is the first of its kind since the fall of the communist regime in 1989.
He is also to hold talks with Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov and Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
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