09 March 2007 :

Suleiman Shahoumi, secretary of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Libya's General Peoples Congress, was quoted by the Sofia news agency as saying that five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor sentenced to death on charges they deliberately infected 426 Libyan children with the HIV virus, will not be executed. This is despite the fact that their death sentences are upheld in a ruling by Libya's supreme court, expected in May. An independent report by leading experts including Luc Montagnier, who co-discovered the HIV virus, supported the medics' claim that the HIV infections started in the Benghazi hospital before their arrival and were caused by poor hygiene standards.