SOFIA, Nov 15 (AFP) - The families of five Bulgarian nurses facing execution in Libya for allegedly infecting children with HIV reacted with anger Tuesday after Libya's supreme court delayed the case until next year.
Bulgarian President Georgy Parvanov also condemned the move, saying it "prolongs the tragedy of our five innocent nurses", and of a Palestinian doctor who faces the firing squad alongside them.
"I assure you that Bulgaria will not spare any effort to ensure a favourable outcome of this painful trial," Parvanov said in a statement.
Earlier Tuesday, Libyan Supreme Court presiding judge Ali al-Alus announced that the decision in the case, closely watched by the international community, had been put off to January 31.
The six medical workers were arrested in early 1999 and sentenced to death in May 2004 for having knowingly injected 426 Libyan children with HIV-tainted blood in the Al-Fatah Children's Hospital in the Mediterranean town of Benghazi.
At least 48 of the children have already died.
Marian Georgiev, stepson of one of the nurses, said the families were not feeling optimistic.
"We have been optimistic for the past seven years, do we have to go on for another 10 years? The nurses are hostages and they are desperate," he told national radio.
Zorka Anachkova, mother of another nurse, said the five were effectively being held hostage by the regime of Moamer Kadhafi so it could extract concessions from the international community.
"I expected it (the delay) as it is most convenient for Kadhafi to give him time to secure something in exchange," she told reporters at a demonstration outside the Libyan embassy in Sofia.
Last December, the Libyan government offered to free the nurses in exchange for compensation equal to that paid by Tripoli to relatives killed in the 1988 bombing of a passenger jet over the Scottish town of Lockerbie.
Bulgaria refused, a position reiterated Tuesday by foreign ministry spokesman Dimitar Tsanchev.
"The nurses are innocent and all proposals for paying compensation or any other form of recognising guilt are unacceptable," he told national radio, adding that the five were "at the limit of their physical and psychological strength".
Bulgaria has also played down reports in British newspapers saying the nurses could be "traded" for Libyan national Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, jailed by Britain for the Lockerbie bombing, in which 270 people died.
The Libyan court which condemned the medical team had rejected testimony from Luc Montaignier, the French doctor who first isolated HIV, and Swiss and Italian colleagues, that the epidemic was due to a lack of hygiene at the hospital and began long before the arrival of the foreign workers.
The court instead placed the blame on the Bulgarians and the Palestinian doctor, sentencing them to death by firing squad in May 2004, a verdict the six appealed to Libya's Supreme Court.
The European Commission said Tuesday that the delay was "a useful step" for Tripoli and reiterated hopes that "justice would be served."
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