Tuesday, December 19, 2006

AIDS Workers Death sentence in Libya

After torture, suicide attempts, broken bones and a kangaroo court show trial based heavily on confessions forced with beatings and electric shocks, six foreign medical workers were found guilty of deliberately infecting hundreds of children with AIDS in Libya.

Never mind that the six Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor re-canted their confessions and the outbreak started before they even arrived. Letting them go would be admitting that hospitals in Libya are so filthy and unprofessional that something like this could happen independently of anyone making it happen.

The Bulgarian government denounced the verdict but won't pay blood money to the children's families which might allow the sentences to be commuted through the Libyan system of blood debt. They say it would constitute an admission of guilt. The Palestinian government is too busy collapsing into bloody civil war to protect it's doctor.

The US is trying to influence the outcome by financing the medical care for the victims, but Ghadaffi's rule is precarious in the region this happened in and he may feel like he can't risk releasing the health workers.

But Libya is on-side in the fight against terror, so that's all right.

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