The Tripoli court that sentenced the five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death on December 19 had deduced that the HIV infection was a "premeditated crime" aiming a "certain goal".

In a 100-page document, the court explains how the decision was reached, Darik News reported, citing the file that was published on the web site of Libya Today newspaper.

The defendants all confessed in full consciousness and without being subject of any violence or torture, the document stated. The fact that there are no discrepancies between the confessions of all the defendants does away with any doubt that these confessions may be false, the document adds.

All tests show that the infected children were directly injected HIV, and this explicitly negates the hypothesis that the infection was caused by contaminated needles or organically, the court believes.

The defendants are also liable on the aftermath of their actions and they should all pay a certain compensation that would "disperse the pain and suffering, though only partially", the document says. The court is not willing to accept the fact that the five were tortured, because another court has already waived this accusation. Kristiyana Valcheva and Palestinian Ashraf al-Hajouj tried to shake off the guilt when they saw the horrible result of their actions and the scope of the catastrophe and that is why they said the hospital's hygiene was poor, the judges decided.

Salima Zaui, a Libyan doctor who worked with the five, claims that they knew nothing about being a nurse and weren't able to communicate fluently in English. Working with them was hard, Zaui said.

The court bases its decision on four main pieces of evidence. First they note that the mothers of the HIV-infected children do not carry the virus, and they add that the unnaturally high levels of HIV in the children's blood testified to the fact that the infection was intentional. Also the court notes that the infection only spread in several hospital rooms, exactly the ones that the five nurses were serving. The last fact that the judges took in consideration is that the research by the World Health Organization showed that the HIV infected children also had Hepatitis C, which was, according to Libya, a further proof that the infection was intentional and malicious.

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