Associated Press - May 6, 2004

"The court is sentencing the defendants No. 1-6 to death by firing squad," said the head of the five-judge panel that heard the case, Fadallah el-Sherif.

Under Libyan law, people condemned to death automatically have the right to appeal. The speaker of Bulgaria's parliament, Ognyan Gerdzhikov, said the verdicts will be appealed.

Prosecutors had demanded death sentences, accusing the Bulgarians of intentionally infecting more than 400 children with HIV-contaminated blood as part of an experiment to find a cure for AIDS. Twenty-three of the children reportedly have since died of AIDS.

Initially Libya claimed the infections were part of a conspiracy by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and Israeli intelligence -- though it has backed away from those allegations.

All six of those accused had pleaded innocent.

Libyan police arrested them in February 1999. They were in prison until September 2002, when a high tribunal in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, acquitted them of conspiracy charges and handed the case over to an ordinary criminal court. They were placed under house arrest in Tripoli until September, when they were taken into custody again upon the recommencement of their trial in Benghazi, according to Bulgarian media reports.

Dr. Luc Montagnier, the French co-discoverer of the AIDS virus, said poor hygiene at the Benghazi hospital likely led to the contamination, and estimated it happened in 1997 -- more than a year before the Bulgarians were hired to work there.

But a commission of court-appointed Libyan doctors rejected the Western expert's testimony and said the Bulgarians willfully infected the children with the virus through blood transfusions.

The European Union, Amnesty International and other organizations have criticized the proceedings, and Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Pasi claims the medics were severely tortured.

The accused have said they were jolted with electricity, beaten with sticks and repeatedly jumped on while strapped to their beds. Two of the women said they were raped.

The trial before the criminal court in Benghazi was nearing its end late last year as Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi began seeking to end decades as an international pariah. He has recently renounced weapons of mass destruction and opened his programs to international inspection.

Libya has also agreed to pay damages to relatives of passengers killed in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and the 1989 bombing of a French jetliner.

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