Associated Press - November 14, 2005
Nevyana Hadjiyska

A Palestinian doctor and five Bulgarian nurses, including Uzunova's mother, face a hearing Tuesday in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, in their appeal of the May 2004 conviction on charges they intentionally infected the children with HIV-contaminated blood in an experiment to find a cure for AIDS.

The United States and European Union have been pressuring Libya to free the six, and international observers say the charges were contrived and extracted by torture.

"It's been terrible. ... The charges were absurd then, they remain absurd now," Uzunova said of the ordeal, which started soon after her mother was hired in 1998 to work at al-Fateh Hospital in the Libyan city of Benghazi.

The nurses and the doctor have been in custody in Libya since 1999.

International human rights groups say the six were tortured before their alleged confessions.

Amnesty International cited detailed accounts from the women of torture, sometimes daily, with electric shocks, threats and severe beatings. Two of the nurses said they were raped, according to Amnesty.

Human Rights Watch, in a report released Tuesday, quoted the medical workers as saying they were subjected to electric shocks to their tongues, breasts and genitals, and were forced to sign confessions in Arabic, without translation.

"We were ready to sign anything just to stop the torture," it quoted one of the nurses, Kristiana Valceva, as saying.

"The confession was like multiple choice, and when I gave a wrong answer they shocked me," the Palestinian doctor Ashraf Ahmad Jum'a was quoted as saying. He said the defendants were also forced to shock each other.

The six medical workers were originally charged with conspiring against the Libyan state as part of a plot sponsored by the CIA and Israel's Mossad intelligence agencies - charges later dropped.

"When I heard them being described as CIA agents ... I knew what would happen," said Uzunova, 28. "Then we found out our loved ones had been tortured in a most cruel way. It's a nightmare."

A decision on whether the Supreme Court will agree to hear the appeal was expected at a brief court session Tuesday. If it refuses to take the case there is no more legal recourse for the six, and the only way out of the death sentences would be a pardon from Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

Bulgarian Justice Minister Georgi Petkanov said Monday he hoped the Libyan court would order a retrial for the nurses and doctor.

"This court has two options - to confirm the conviction, or to overturn it and to order a retrial," Petkanov told private Nova TV. "I hope they would choose the latter."

According to Petkanov, a possible retrial would last six months to a year. If the verdicts are confirmed, the sentence could be carried out immediately.

Velislava Dareva of the Bulgarian non-governmental Association 17/26, which leads a campaign for the nurses' release, said she believed accusations by human rights groups that Libya fabricated the charges to cover up unsafe practices at its hospitals and clinics.

"Both our nurses and the sick children are hostages," she said. "It's clear the children are victims of Libya's health care system."

During last year's trial in Benghazi, French Professor Luc Montagnier - the co-discoverer of HIV - testified the infection had spread in the children's hospital before the health care workers arrived.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has said relations with Libya hinge on the fate of the Bulgarian nurses.

And last month, President Bush reiterated the U.S. position that the medical workers should be freed. "There should be no confusion in the Libyan government's mind that those nurses ought to be not only spared ... but out of prison," he said.

Bulgaria has rejected a suggestion by Libyan officials that the nurses could be spared the death penalty if the Bulgarian government paid compensation to the families of the AIDS victims.

"Who will pay for the torture, for the years of pain the nurses have suffered?" said Bulgarian lawmaker Evgeni Kirilov, who has campaigned for the nurses' release.

Uzunova said her mother, Valya Chervenyashka, agrees.

"She's been through such terrible things, she's the victim after all."

She said she fears her mother's ordeal will not be over Tuesday.

"I don't think it will end with the appeals hearing ... but I cannot afford not to hope."

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