Libya's Supreme Court of Justice will hold a hearing on June 20 on the trial against the five Bulgaria nurses and the Palestinian doctor after they appealed the verdict.

A Libyan court confirmed their death verdicts on December 19, 2006. Judge Mahmoud Haouissa pronounced them guilty over deliberately infecting 426 Libyan children with HIV, but dropped the accompanying charges of illegal alcohol production and trading, adultery and foreign currency crimes. The court also sentenced the defendants to pay indemnifications to the families of AIDS-stricken families.

At the first sitting the supreme judges have to review whether to accept or reject defendants' appeal, according to the defence lawyer Osman Bizanti. If the court accepts the appeal, a next sitting will follow and the judges will announce the decision after two or three consecutive sitting, Bizanti believes.

This is the final court instance, which will confirm, repeal the death sentence or will pronounce a different one, but it cannot order retrial. This means that the court's decision will be final.

In case of confirming the sentence, there is a possibility that the six medics' lawyers to ask the Libyan Supreme Judiciary Council to reprieve the defendants.

Prosecutors sought the death penalty for five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor - who deny charges. They say the medics deliberately injected the children with contaminated blood as part of an experiment to find an AIDS cure.

Defence lawyers said the children had the virus before the nurses arrived to start work in the city of Benghazi, and that the medics are scapegoats for unhygienic practices at the hospital.

The foreign medical staff were first convicted of the crime and sentenced to die in 2004, but Libya's Supreme Court ordered a retrial. Official media in Libya are declaring that the guilt of the accused is a foregone conclusion. They have been held in jail in Libya since March 1999.

The case has become a focus of tension between Libya and the West, where experts are united in believing that the six have been made scapegoats for a crime they did not commit.

Reports by top AIDS experts, including one by Professor Luc Montagnier, one of the discoverers of AIDS, and Professor Vittorio Colizzi, have exonerated them.

Professor Montagnier said the epidemic was probably caused by poor hygiene in the hospital, and pointed out that it had begun before the six started working there, and continued after their arrest.

In May Vittorio Colizzi stated that the infection came from the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa through migration of already infected people, mainly pregnant women.

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