The prosecutor in the retrial of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, charged with intentionally infecting some 400 Libyan children with HIV, called for the death sentences to be confirmed.

The six defendants were present at the court-room as Tripoli Criminal Court opened the seventh hearing of the retrial.

The court was to question two more witnesses for the prosecution but they failed to turn up in court.

One of witnesses was to be a 14-year-old girl, which was expected to finger Bulgarian defendant Snezhana Dimitrova as the nurse who treated her upon entering the Benghazi hospital. Suheyla, who was at that time six years old, claimed at the previous hearings that the injection was given her on September 30, 1998, a day when Snezhana was not at work.

Orchestrated by the prosecutors in her testimonies, the girl was expected Tuesday to point out a date, which will coincide with the Bulgarian's working schedule. Suheyla, however, was not present in court on August 29.

Prior to the court session Snezhana Dimitrova said she was innocent, Evgenia Marcheva from Darik News reported. "Nightmares and reality are all rolled into one," she said, very upset.

The five Bulgarian nurses have already spent seven years in Libyan jail, and say they have been tortured to extract false confessions. After they were once found guilty and sentenced to death by a firing squad, but a higher court ordered a retrial.

The next session of the court has been scheduled for September 5.

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