SOFIA, Feb 16 (AFP) - Prosecutors in Libya on Monday called for the death sentence for seven health workers, six Bulgarian and one Palestinian, accused of spreading AIDS in a children's hospital in the northern Libyan town of Benghazi, Bulgarian radio reported.
The state stood by its charge that two doctors -- one Palestinian and one Bulgarian -- and five Bulgarian nurses infected 426 children in a Benghazi hospital with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, with tainted blood products.
Libyan medical experts have testified that 43 of the children who were allegedly infected by the accused with tainted blood products, have already died of AIDS.
The defence is relying on testimony by Luc Montagnier -- the French doctor who first isolated the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) -- that the epidemic had broken out in the hospital before the arrival of the accused.
He blamed the epidemic on poor hygiene.
The accused have been held for five years.
For the first time since the start of their long-running trial representatives from Amnesty International were present in court on Monday, along with representatives from the nine European embassies in Libya.
Last week Robert Bradtke, the US deputy secretary of state, said in Sofia that the six Bulgarians accused "should be freed as soon as possible."
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