Libya death sentence for medics

SOFIA, Bulgaria -- In 1998, at a time when her country was mired in hyperinflation, Valya Chervenyashka left her rural Bulgarian village and went to work as a nurse in Benghazi, Libya, for $250 a month, to pay for her daughters' college education.

Today, Chervenyashka and four other Bulgarian nurses, as well as a Palestinian doctor, are under death sentence in a Libyan jail and facing a firing squad, accused of intentionally infecting more than 400 hospitalized Libyan children with the AIDS virus - in order, according to the initial indictment, to undermine Libyan state security.

They were also charged with working for Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service.

Although the motive of subversion has since been dropped, the death sentence stands.

The nurses' final appeal is scheduled to be heard by the Libyan Supreme Court on Nov. 15.

"Nurses from little towns in Bulgaria acting as agents of Mossad?" said Antoanetta Ouzounova, one of Chervenyashka's daughters, now 28. "It all sounds funny and absurd until you realize your mother could die for it."

Libyan officials have suggested that the Bulgarians pay $10 million in compensation for each of the 420 children allegedly infected with AIDS, according to Bulgarian and EU diplomats.

From an article appearing in the International Herald Tribune, October 14, 2005.