Hundreds rally in solidarity with 6 medical workers condemned to death in Libya

ATHENS, Greece: Bulgarian immigrants staged a demonstration Sunday in Athens in solidarity with five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor who are facing a death penalty in Libya for allegedly infecting about 400 Libyan children with HIV.

Holding banners reading "You are not alone," more than 300 demonstrators gathered at central Kotzia Square, demanding the release of the six medical workers, who deny infecting the children.

The workers were condemned to death in a December retrial amid international concern over the fairness of Libyan justice. They also were sentenced to death in 2004.

The sentences were based on the nurses' alleged confessions, but some of the nurses have said they were tortured into admitting guilt.

Expert witnesses at the trial testified that the HIV virus was rampant in the Benghazi hospital where the children were infected before the Bulgarians began working there in the late 1990s.

The six workers have been in jail since their arrest in February 1999.