SCAPEGOATS IN LIBYA

As five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor await a verdict in Tripoli on charges that they spread HIV to 426 Libyan children, hundreds of prominent scientists are rallying in their defense, calling for a new and fairer trial. The nurses and doctor were foreign experts working at Al Fateh Children's Hospital in Benghazi, Libya, in 1998, when an outbreak of HIV was detected at the hospital. For years, the Libyan authorities, including the country's leader, Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, blamed the foreigners for the outbreak, suggesting that they had intentionally injected Libya's children with the virus.

But a 2003 independent scientific report on the outbreak, by two of Europe's most prominent AIDS experts who spent many weeks in Libya reviewing the evidence, concluded that poor sanitary practices at the hospital were to blame. Despite that report, which was commissioned by the Libyan government, the six have been in prison in Libya since their arrest in 1999, and they were sentenced to death in 2004. A new trial was ordered after international protests. In August, when the second trial started, prosecutors again requested the death penalty. The expert report was not presented at the new trial.

The two experts, Dr. Luc Montagnier, co-discoverer of the virus that causes AIDS, and Dr. Vittorio Colizzi of Italy, said they had not been called to testify. "We're concerned that the nurses and the doctor are being used as scapegoats for the problem of HIV in Libya," said Dr. Ian Gilmore, the president of the Royal College of Physicians, who signed one of the letters.

Last week, on the Web site of the journal Nature, 114 Nobel laureates signed an open letter to Qaddafi. By not allowing "independent scientific evidence" to be presented at the trial, the letter said, "a miscarriage of justice will take place without proper consideration of scientific evidence." Dr. Richard Roberts, who shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, said he delivered the letter on Tuesday to Ambassador Attia Mubarak, the leader of the Libyan mission to the United Nations.

Last month, the leaders of Britain's most eminent scientific institutions, including the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal Society, began a similar letter campaign. In The Times of London, the scientists wrote: "We ask the medical and scientific authorities of the United Nations, Arab countries, United States and European Union (Bulgaria will join the EU in three months) to exert their utmost influence on President Qaddafi to prevent what might amount to judicial murder."

American and European politicians have frequently raised concerns about the medics' fate, but have also gone on to develop closer relations with Libya.

Verdicts due in December: The second trial of the nurses and doctor concluded Sunday, with the judge announcing that the verdicts would be handed down on Dec. 19, Matthew Brunwasser of the International Herald Tribune reported from Sofia.

The Bulgarian deputy foreign minister, Feim Chaushev, made an unannounced visit to Tripoli on Thursday to meet his counterpart, Abdulati Obeidi. Chaushev told Bulgarian journalists in Tripoli after the meeting that the Libyans had assured him of their "political will" for the quick resolution of the case, according to the Bulgarian Telegraphic Agency. He also said that the two sides could move toward creating a mechanism for eventually returning the medics to Bulgaria, through their extradition agreement, for example, which might allow the nurses to serve any sentences in Bulgaria. After the final hearing on Saturday, Bulgarian officials did not comment. A Foreign Ministry spokesman, Dimitar Tsanchev, said only: "We expect the court to issue a just ruling."

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