Беседа:Процесът срещу българските медици и палестинския лекар в Либия/en
In the unfinished trial against the Bulgarian medics and a Palestinian doctor in Libya five Bulgarian nurses (Kristiyana Valtcheva, Nasya Nenova, Valentina Siropulo, Valya Chervenyashka and Snezhana Dimitrova) as well as one Palestinian doctor (Ashraf al-Hajuj) have been accused of:
- committing actions on the territory of Libya which led to uncontrolled killing of people in an attempt on the state's security (punishable with death)
- participating in a conspiracy and team negotiation for commission of a murder;
- causing an epidemic through injecting 393 children with HIV in the children’s hospital Al-Fatih in Benghazi (punishable with death);
- acting contrary to Libyan standards and traditions (including usage of alcohol)
The nurses and Ashraf al-Hadjudj arrived in Libya in 1998 to cure patients in the pediatrics. A Bulgarian doctor Zdravko Georgiev is also accused in this trial, although of lesser crimes (illegal transactions with foreign exchange). Dr. Georgiev went to Libya to see his wife Kristiyana Valtcheva who had been detained; subsequently he was detained and tried, too. Georgiev was sentenced to 4 years and he served more than that before he was released from prison, but he is still in Libya, awaiting for an exit visa.
Cases[редактиране на кода]
Case 44/1999 of People's Court of Libya[редактиране на кода]
(February 7, 2000 - February 17, 2002)
The case began without Bulgaria being notified. It was suspended because the Court did not see any evidence for the accusation of conspiracy against the country. The judge made a statement saying that the People's Court of Libya is incompetent with regard to the case. The People's Court of Libya is the lowest court in the three-instanced court system.
- The confessions of part of the medics and the contention of the Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi that the accused worked as CIA and Mossad agents are considered to be the basis of the case.
- Bulgarian medics declared during the case that the confessions were obtained through torture. Qaddafi's thesis was rejected as absurd by both the international press and the experts.
- A few months after the beginning of the case, lawyers Vladimir Sheitanov and Osman Bizanti appealed to the court demanding that the detention measure be altered because of the Bulgarians' physical and psychic state. Sheitanov said that the almost 2 year preliminary detention was incompatible with the principle of "innocent until guilty proven".
- The Libyan officers who obtained confessions from the medics admitted that the medics had been tortured in order to confess.
Case 213/2002 of the Criminal Court in Benghazi[редактиране на кода]
- Libya withdrew its accusation of participation in a CIA/Mossad conspiracy and made new accusation of illegal drug experiments and of contamination with HIV mutations. Experts assert that the accusations are absurd or incompetently made up from a medical viewpoint.
- In a court session, two internationally recognized experts, Luc Montagnier (HIV discoverer) and Vittorio Colizzi, said that the epidemic at Al-Fatih resulted from poor hygiene and that the infection began spreading in 1997, a year before the accused started working there. After the session, BBC published a report on the trial's progress under the title "Bulgarian Medics did not spread AIDS".
Case 607/2003 of the Criminal Court in Benghazi[редактиране на кода]
The Criminal Court sentenced Kristiyana Valtcheva, Nasya Nenova, Valentina Siropulo, Valya Chervenyashka, Snezhana Dimitrova) and Ashraf al-Hajuj to death by firing squad for deliberately infecting more than 400 Libyan children with HIV. Kristiyana Valtcheva and Zdravko Georgiev were sentenced to 4 years’ imprisonment, fine and deprivation of human rights on the charge of making illegal transactions with foreign exchange. Under the civil suit, the court obliged Ashraf al-Hajuj, Kristiyana Valtcheva and Nasya Nenova to pay compensations to the infected children's parents. Motivated complaints against the court’s decision were lodged on July 5 2004.
- In January 2004 the European Union recommended that Libya withdrew its charges. The letter was delivered by the ambassadors of the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.
- Amnesty International, the American Department of State and other state and international organizations expressed their concern with the course of the trial.
- The Government of Bulgaria, which lobbies for the release of the defendants, defined the verdict as unjust and absurd.
Case of the Supreme Court in Tripoli[редактиране на кода]
The case of the Supreme Court will probably begin at the beginning of 2005. According to the Libyan legislation, the case cannot accept any new evidence, although the Bulgarian party argues that there has been wrongly interpreted evidence during the court sessions so far.
International press on the trial[редактиране на кода]
The international press does not pay sufficient attention to the process. Most of the articles are unanimous that the defendants are used as a scapegoat by the Libyan authorities who tolerated a poor hospital hygiene enabling the epidemic’s onslaught. Libyan media as well as a considerable part of the Arabian press support Libya's official declaration that this trial is fair. Bulgarian media give extensive coverage of the current events while stressing on the absurdity and monstrosity of the case.