TRIPOLI, Jan 14 (AFP) - Libya's parliament has called for the heaviest possible punishment for those responsible for an AIDS epidemic at a hospital in which nearly 400 children were infected, the state news agency JANA said Friday.
The assembly, which has no powers to intervene in court matters, did not name anyone or say what punishment it envisaged, but five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor are on death row on charges of infecting the children in a Benghazi hospital.
Bulgarian President Georgy Parvanov said the parliamentary call was an "alarming signal," while the European Commission renewed a request for Libya to act to secure the release of the Bulgarians and Palestinian.
At their trial in May, after five years in detention, all six defendants pleaded not guilty. Two of the nurses and the doctor said during the trial that they were tortured into confessing.
JANA said parliament stressed that the victims of the epidemic were entitled to claim just compensation "for this crime described as a crime against humanity."
The six condemned have appealed against the conviction on charges of infecting 380 children with the AIDS virus and causing the death of 46 others while working in the city's children's hospital.
Last month, Libyan Foreign Minister Abdelraham Shalgham said the verdict could be overturned if Bulgaria paid compensation to the families of the infected children.
Bulgaria rejected the proposal saying it would amount to acknowledging the nurses' guilt while it was convinced they were innocent.
On Friday, Bulgaria's Parvanov said "this is one more proof of the fact that there are circles who want to politicise the process."
Traian Markovski, the Bulgarian lawyer of the five nurses, was quoted by the Focus news agency as saying "pressure over the Libyan court is obviously tremendous and puts to the test its moral ethics and conscience".
"The result (of the trial) will be a proof of whether the old maxim is true that when politics enters court, law dies," Markovski said.
Following the parliamentary statement, the European Commission spokeswoman Francoise Le Bail repeated a call for Libya "to put an end to this situation as fast as possible".
"The commission has make the utmost effort for the liberation of the nurses and (is) pleading for a fast solution to this problem," she added.
Bulgaria is due to join the EU in 2007 and the union has long taken up the cause of the convicted nurses.
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