TRIPOLI, Feb 11 (Reuters) - Five Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death for infecting Libyan children with HIV appeared in court on Sunday on charges that they defamed two Libyans by accusing them of torture, the nurses' lawyer said. The lawyer, Othman Bizanti, said the five were due to have been examined about the charges at the start of the new criminal trial on Sunday but the Tripoli district court had agreed to his request for more time to study the case. The court had now set the questioning for Feb 25, he said. A police officer, Juma Mishri, and a doctor, Abdulmajid Alshoul, are each claiming five million dinars ($3.9 million) in compensation for distress they say was caused when the nurses gave testimony accusing them of torture in a 2005 court case. Alshoul and nine Libyan policemen including Mishri were acquitted of the torture charges in June 2005. The news of the new trial against the nurses, in jail since 1999, has sparked sharp criticism in Bulgaria. In a case which started eight years ago, a Libyan court in December sentenced the nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death for starting an HIV epidemic in a hospital in the eastern town of Benghazi. The Libyan prosecution based its case mainly on confessions from some of the nurses who say they are innocent and were beaten and tortured to admit guilt. European Union newcomer Bulgaria and its allies in Brussels and Washington have decried the verdicts as unfair and have stepped up diplomatic pressure on Tripoli to release them. A Bulgarian prosecutor has said a Bulgarian court plans to try the Libyan policemen and Alshoul in absentia on charges of torturing the nurses to obtain confessions in the HIV case. The convictions in the HIV case are expected to be reviewed on appeal shortly in the Supreme Court. Even if the conviction in the HIV case is upheld, a government-led Libyan body can overturn it. But experts say that is likely to happen only if Western nations and Libya can agree on how much Western nations should pay towards a fund that has been set up to help the hundreds of HIV-infected Libyan children. Prospects of such a deal -- long discussed by Libya and Western officials as a face-saving solution -- have dimmed amid a recent war of words between Libya and Bulgaria over the case. Bulgaria has condemned the trial and criticised comments by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in late December in which he defended the convictions.
