Sofia - Five Bulgarian nurses on death row in Libya in a controversial Aids case are demanding compensation for being tortured in detention, Bulgarian national television reported on Monday.
The nurses' Libyan lawyer, Othmane al-Bizanthi, told bTV each of them was demanding a million dinars (about R3-million) from the Libyan authorities.
The lawyer said a case against 10 police officers accused by the women of torturing them would begin in Libya on January 25.
The nurses were sentenced to death, along with a Palestinian doctor, in May last year on charges of infecting 380 children with Aids and causing the death of 46 others while working in the city's children's hospital in Benghazi in northern Libya.
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They were tortured into confessing At their trial in May, after five years in detention, all six defendants pleaded not guilty. Two of the nurses and the doctor said during the trial that they were tortured into confessing.
Medical experts testified at the trial that the HIV infections were the result of poor hygiene at the hospital and that the epidemic was under way before the nurses arrived.
The families of three Libyan children who have died of AIDS recently brought compensation claims against the Bulgarian government.
The Libyan government has also said it would drop the case against the five nurses if Sofia paid out 10 million euros for every child infected with the virus at the hospital.
The Bulgarian government has rejected the proposal. Foreign Minister Solomon Passy said Saturday however that Bulgaria was ready to give humanitarian help to Libya to cope with the Aids epidemic. - Sapa-AFP
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