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December 6, 2006

Study Disputes Case in Libyan AIDS Trial

Topics: Understanding Islam

The AP reports that scientists who are racing against a courtroom deadline, have produced new evidence that a Palestinian doctor and five Bulgarian nurses at a Libyan hospital did not deliberately infect hundreds of children with the AIDS virus, as charged:

The health care workers are on trial in a Libyan court, where a verdict is expected in two weeks.

In an analysis of HIV and hepatitis virus samples from some of the children, researchers conclude that the viral strains were circulating at the hospital and the surrounding area well before the five nurses and the doctor arrived in March 1998.

The doctor and nurses had been convicted in an earlier trial of deliberately infecting more than 400 children with HIV, and they were sentenced to death. That led to international protests that the original trial was improperly conducted, and accusations that Libya concocted the charges to cover up poor hygiene at its hospitals. Libya's Supreme Court ordered the new trial last December.

The judge in the new trial has set the verdict date for Dec. 19.

A reader, Guido, writes that the question in this case is whether or not islamic courts are even capable of logical, rational thought or are they purely agenda driven agencies of tyranny which hand out summary judgments without the slightest consideration of the facts. Time will tell. Unfortunately the lives of these doctors hang in the balance, their only real sin giving compassion to a culture which so seethes with xenophobia that it would bite the hand that heals it.

Posted by Richard at December 6, 2006 10:56 PM

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