Kangaroo court
As you prepare for Christmas or whatever winter holiday you celebrate, give a thought to the five Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian doctor imprisoned in Libya on spurious charges and sentenced to death by firing squad. They were arrested in 1999 and charged with infecting more than 400 Libyan children with the AIDs virus. Some of them were tortured into confessing.
As Kafkaesque nightmares go, this one is right up there. Apparently it is quite easy to prove scientifically that they had nothing to do with the infections, but the exculpatory evidence was disallowed at their trial. Most Western doctors blame unsanitary conditions in Libyan hospitals for the infections. A number of observers suspect the whole thing is an extortion plot by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, possibly to extract perverted vengeance for the blood money he had to pay in the Lockerbie bombing case.
With the U.S. facing loss of the war in Iraq because of George W. Bush's demented bungling, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that the world is full of bad people. Gaddafi is one of them; these medical caregivers are not.