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Tripoli Six
Sep. 21st, 2006 12:20 pmI am disappointed at how little coverage the plight of the Tripoli Six has been getting. Story precis:
In the 1990s, five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor arrived to work in the al-Fateh hospital in Libya. Shortly afterwards, over 400 children were diagnosed with HIV. Investigation by prominent HIV researchers including Luc Montagnier have determined that the infections predated the foreigners' arrival at the hospital and were most likely due to poor hygiene practices (I haven't seen the details, but I'm guessing reuse of needles). But this is not a politically palatable result for the Libyan government, and instead they made a scapegoat out of these unfortunate people.
For the last seven years they have been held in prison in miserable conditions, tortured and by some allegations raped. They were sentenced to death in 2004, then retried; without heavy international pressure, the retrial is unlikely to go much differently, since the driving interest is not truth but politics. Meanwhile, both the EU and the USA have been courting Gaddafi and show little interest in the case. :-(
In the 1990s, five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor arrived to work in the al-Fateh hospital in Libya. Shortly afterwards, over 400 children were diagnosed with HIV. Investigation by prominent HIV researchers including Luc Montagnier have determined that the infections predated the foreigners' arrival at the hospital and were most likely due to poor hygiene practices (I haven't seen the details, but I'm guessing reuse of needles). But this is not a politically palatable result for the Libyan government, and instead they made a scapegoat out of these unfortunate people.
For the last seven years they have been held in prison in miserable conditions, tortured and by some allegations raped. They were sentenced to death in 2004, then retried; without heavy international pressure, the retrial is unlikely to go much differently, since the driving interest is not truth but politics. Meanwhile, both the EU and the USA have been courting Gaddafi and show little interest in the case. :-(
