Can you help me understand this Libyan case?

4 Comments

1. 

   hanni on May 28, 2005 at 6:53 pm

   I remember reading about this a few years ago.  At the time I got the sense that it had to do with suspicion of foreign workers (which never helps), and the need to blame this on somebody, other than a country which is so isolated, and prides itself in having none of the corrupt diseases that plague morally inferior nations.  Libya, like so many Arab States, is in denial about AIDS, and has taken the easiest path by naming a foreign scapegoat.  As for the accusations being true, I don’t believe there was intent involved – though to be honest I am unsure of what state Libya’s medical industry is in, and whether or not their records are any good.

   • 

     Dean Pajevic on May 28, 2005 at 7:31 pm

     Then it’s really quite tragic.  Those nurses’ lives been destroyed.  I wonder what HR groups have done about it.

     • 

       ask on May 28, 2005 at 7:42 pm

       The BBC-story linked above didn’t give much background.  Nor did the archived articles it linked to.
       I could not find that much more, but this link from etaiwannews provides a bit more:

       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 have reportedly died of AIDS.
       Human rights groups have charged Libya concocted the experiment story to cover up for unsafe practices in its hospitals and clinics.
       Dr. Luc Montagnier, the French co-discoverer of the AIDS virus, said poor hygiene at the Benghazi hospital is likely to have led to the contamination. He 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.
       Initially, Libya claimed the infections were part of a conspiracy by the CIA and Israeli intelligence, but it later backed away from those allegations.
       All six Bulgarians 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.

       Dr. Montagnier’s statement above seems plausible, but I don’ know if we can access the evidence presented at the trial.  

2. 

   Jerome a Paris on May 28, 2005 at 11:37 pm

   http://www.rfi.fr/actufr/articles/063/article_35118.asp

   from last March. Some highlights

   • Montagnier visited the hospital where the kids dies, and established that (i) the first cases date back from 1994, before the Bulgarians were there and (ii) bad higiene and procedures (including sharing of used needles) can be blamed
   • the blame game has changed several times. First the CIA and Mossad were accused, then he accused a doctor gone crazy, before finbally latching onto the Bulgarian scenario
   • final decision of the Supreme Court is due on 31 May, and meanwhile Kaddafi has offered to “sell” back the Bulgarians for the price he has to pay for the Lockerbie and UTA victims. Bulgaria does not have that kind of money and refuses the implied acknowledgement of guilt.
   • the article (which was published in March)  mentions that 10 officers accused of torture to get the confessions were due to be judged on 26 April, but i don’t know what’s happened there.