Save the Tripoli Six

Five nurses and a doctor are facing execution by a Libyan firing squad on trumped up charges that the deliberately infected 400 children with the HiV virus in 1998.

Attorneys from Lawyers Without Borders, who are handling the defence of the six, have responded by calling for the international community to request that the court order an independent scientific assessment, by international AIDS experts, of how the children became infected.

The medics were condemned to death in May 2004, but the Supreme Court quashed their convictions last December, following international protests that the first trial had been unfair. It ordered a retrial, which has run intermittently since 11 May at the Criminal Court of Benghazi, based in Tripoli. A verdict is expected within weeks.

But the scientific community has so far shown relatively little interest in the case, says Emmanuel Altit, a member of the Paris bar and a volunteer with Lawyers Without Borders, who has in the past defended inmates at Guantanamo Bay. "We have knocked on a lot of doors, but we have not had much help; we hope this will change."

Via Respectful Insolence.