The kaleidoscope of fractured images emerging from the murder trial of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian Physician in Libya is more than vaguely disconcerting. Kristinia Volcheva, Nasya Nenma, Valentina Sirapuvo', Valya Chermenyaska, Snezhava Dimitrana and Asheraf Al Hajaj have been found guilty by a Libyan court of murdering forty and infecting hundreds of Libyan children through injection of an HIV virus and sentenced to die by firing squad for the second time. The Libyan Supreme Court overturned their first conviction on December 25, 2005. The condemned are represented by Lawyers Without Borders an international legal defense organization.
The case while inciting international outrage and condemnation contains many seed of concern which sometimes reverberates through American Courts - overzealous prosecutors pandering to public cries for retribution; fundamental religious overlays in pursuit of eye for an eye justice; the lack of hard evidence; the reliance on coerced confessions; the distrust and rejection of countervailing scientific evidence when stacked up against passion and belief.
It is inconceivable in the first place that these medical professionals would abandon their professional and humanitarian principals and and engage in wide spread conspiracy to murder children when they were on a mission of mercy in the first place. The six have been held in custody for approximately seven years and have been beaten, tortured and subject to sexual abuse. Several of the nurses gave "confessions" in order to stop the physical and psychological torture.
Separate efforts by the two co-discoverers of the Aids virus, Luc Montagnier of France and Robert Gallo of University of Maryland to convince the Libyans that the source of the HIV epidemic in Benghazi was caused by poor hygiene. Prof. Vittorio Colizzi, a world renowned virologist and Director of the Immunochemical & Molecular Pathology Laboratory at Tor Vergata University in Rome, undertook a study of the virus samples extracted from over one hundred of the children. He was able to trace the date of infection of 70% of the C type hepatitis infection children to a virus infection before the nurses arrived in 1998 and 40% of the HIV infection cases to before 1998. Prof. Colizzi relates,"(e)very virus mutates and if we know the speed of the mutation we can easily calculate when the infection incurred." The study was recently published in the distinguished journal Nature, but was ignored in Bengazi.
Commenting on the lack of evidence in the Libyan case, Janice Jagger an epidemiologist working for the International Healthcare Worker Safety Center at the University of Virginia stated,
The evidence in terms of the prosecutions case is the most vague evidence that I have ever seen. I mean this kind of evidence wouldn't even be admissible in a court in the United States.
I wonder if she meant it the way it sounds? In any event, their is a wide spread belief that Col. Gaddafi will extract some kind of political/financial retribution for the exchange of the six at some point, but the outrage on both sides continues.
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Posted by: Nick Matyas | January 12, 2010 at 03:57 PM