Libya's Supreme Court will hear on May 18 an appeal against the death sentence for five Bulgarian nurses, charged with infecting more than 400 children with HIV in a Benghazi hospital.

The date is still tentative, said lawyer Hari Haralambiev, who represents the nurses.

The five Bulgarian nurses have spent the past eight years in a Libyan jail. Their first death sentence was rescinded and the Libyan Supreme Court sent the case to a lower court for re-trial, which resulted in a similar sentence.

At the same time, a Libyan court ruled on Sunday to postpone by one week the hearings on the case in which Libyan policemen are accusing the nurses of slander.

The case now has six plaintiffs, compared to three when the suit was brought to court in February, and the prosecutors are demanding the nurses are sentenced to the maximum penalty - three years imprisonment.

The five nurses claim that the confessions they made about intentionally infecting the Libyan children with HIV, were extracted from them by horrific and most barbarous tortures.

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