The five Bulgarian nurses, sentenced to death for knowingly infecting with HIV hundreds of Libyan children, have been accused of slandering the police.

The nurses were in great distress after learning they will be questioned on February 11, Libyan lawyer Osman al-Bizanti told AFP News Agency.

The charge comes to punish the Bulgarians for claiming that were severely tortured into making confessions during their police interrogation.

In the first trial, the judges set aside the scientific evidence in favor of a dramatic cloak-and-dagger scenario based on testimony by Libyans who said they had witnessed the nurses hoarding vials of HIV-infected blood; the testimony was bolstered by confessions that the nurses have since said were elicited by torture.

The nurses complained of severe torture during their police interrogation, saying they were jolted with electricity, beaten with sticks and repeatedly jumped on while strapped to their beds. Two of the women said they were raped.

Nine Libyan security officers and a doctor were charged and later acquitted of torturing the nurses to extract confessions that they deliberately infected 426 children with the HIV virus that causes AIDS in a Benghazi hospital.

At the end of June 2006 a Libyan court rejected the appeal of five Bulgarian medics on the acquittal of the Libyans, saying the evidence against the policemen was too weak to convict them.

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