User talk:68.60.68.203/Libya AIDS case/Draft2

Synopsis

The El-Fath epidemic is the largest incident of hospital-induced (nosocomial) HIV in history. The crisis began in November 1998 when Libyan "La" magazine (issue 78) published an expose about AIDS at the hospital. In December the Association of Libyan Writers reported over 60 cases of AIDS so far that year in Libya. "La" interviewed Sulaiman al-Ghemari, Libyan Minister for Health, who told them that most of the cases are children. Parents believed their children were infected through blood transfusion in Benghazi's main children hospital. "La" magazine was shut down but it was eventually revealed that over 400 children had been infected. Libya requested and received an emergency WHO team which was sent in December and stayed through January of 1999. The WHO team issued a classified report on the situation.

In February 1999 the Bulgarian embassy announced that 23 Bulgarian specialists had been "kidnapped". A week later they were informed by Libyan authorities that “precautionary measures” had been taken against Bulgarian doctors and nurses working at the Benghazi Children’s Hospital. Most of the nurses were recruited by Bulgarian state-owned company Expomed to work at the Libyan hospital, where pay was considerably higher than they could receive at home, beginning work in February of 1998. Initial Bulgarian coverage focused on a scandal in the wake of the arrests when the Bulgarian news journal "24 hours" of February 24th published an investigation of money laundering at Expomed entitled "How we lost USD 5,048, 292 in Lybia". On March 7, 1999 six members of the group subjected to "precautionary measures" were formally arrested on a warrant in connection with the case of infecting children in Benghazi with HIV. The group consists of Ashraf al-Hajuj, a Palestinian intern, and Bulgarian nurses Kristiyana Valtcheva, Nasya Nenova, Valentina Siropulo, Valya Chervenyashka, and Snezhana Dimitrova. They are later to become widely known as "the Benghazi Six" a term first promulgated by advocacy groups, and adopted by some of the western popular press.

On February 7, 2000, the first of several trials began. The charges were: intentionally "murdering with a lethal substance (Article 371 of the Penal Code), randomly killing with the aim of attacking the security of the State (Article 202), and causing an epidemic through spreading harmful virus, leading to the death of persons (Article 305)." In addition, Bulgarians were accused of acting contrary to Libyan customs and traditions, by engaging in non-marital sexual relations and drinking alcohol in public places, distilling alcohol, and illegally transacting in foreign currency.

The defendants confessed, but repudiated their confessions. They gave interviews and testified at trial that they were forced to confess by the use of torture. Charges were then filed against 10 Libyan security personnel, some of whom claimed they had been tortured to confess that they had tortured the others. The guards were eventually acquitted. In April of 2001 Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi made a speech at the African summit on HIV/AIDS. He told the conference that the world AIDS epidemic started when "CIA laboratories lost control over the virus which they were testing on black Haitian prisoners" He called the HIV crisis in Benghazi "an odious crime" and questioned who was behind it."Some said it was the CIA Others said it was the Mossad Israeli intelligence. They carried out an experiment on these children." He went on to say that the trial would be "an international trial, like the Lockerbie trial."

The scientific community became politically embroiled in the events when the findings of a 2003 report, which had been commissioned by the Libyan Jamahiriya, by Luc Montagnier, a co-discoverer of the AIDS virus, and Italian microbiologist Vittorio Colizzi was ultimately rejected by the court in favor of the conclusions of a Libyan expert panel. Montagnier and Colizzi both testified in person at the trial of record for the defense. Their report concluded that the infection at the hospital resulted from poor hygiene and reuse of syringes, and that the infections began before the arrival of the nurses and doctor in 1998. Through hospital records, and the DNA sequences of the virus, they traced it to patient n.356 who was admitted 28 times between 1994–97 in Ward B, ISO and Ward A, and theorized that this patient was the probable source of the infection. The first cross-contamination occurred during that patient's 1997 admission. The report concludes that the admission records of a total of 21 of the children "definitively prove that the HIV infection in the Al-Fateh Hospital was already active in 1997" and that "Ward B was already heavy contaminated in November 1997." The epidemic snowballed in 1998 to well over 400 children.

The first case was dismissed, in the second they were sentenced to death, this was appealed, and the case was retried in the Libyan Supreme Court which ordered a retrial. On December 19, 2006, in the third retrial, all six were pronounced guilty, and were again sentenced to death by firing squad. The scientific journals 'the Lancet' and 'Nature' both advocated heavily for the release of the defendants. Libyan citizens groups and victims associations, in contrast, demanded justice for the victims, sometimes rioting outside the courtroom and expressing outrage at western defense of the "killer nurses". After the latest conviction, 114 Nobel Laureates in the sciences co-signed an open letter to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi calling for a fair trial. The case has been appealed again to the Supreme Court, the final hearing before possible review by the Libyan government's Supreme Judicial Council.