Libya HIV case verdict on Dec 19-judge

TRIPOLI, Nov 4 (Reuters) A Libyan court will deliver its verdict on six foreign medics accused of deliberately infecting Libyan children with HIV on Dec 19, the judge said today.

''The case has been reserved for the issuing of the verdict on 19 December,'' Judge Mahmoud Haouissa told the court.

Five Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian doctor Ashraf Alhajouj face a possible death sentence on charges they intentionally infected 426 Libyan children with HIV at a hospital in Benghazi.

The medics were found guilty in a first trial in 2004 and sentenced to death by firing squad. But the supreme court overturned the ruling last year and ordered the case returned to a lower court.

The medics have denied the charges in both their first and second trials and have repeatedly testified that they were tortured to make them confess.

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