This may be the ugliest case of deja vu in history - five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor have been sentenced to death by Libya's Supreme Court for "infecting" up to 400 children with HIV.

The wellness workers - who have been imprisoned for the last seven years - were actually found guilty of the same crime before, but political pressure kept the sanction-prone country from following through with the execution.

The retrial came just before Nature Magazine reported that the children, fifty of whom have already died of AIDS-related complications, were infected with the retrovirus before the workers arrived in the African nation.

365 Gay elaborates:

The verdict, which will be automatically referred to Libya's Supreme Court, drew quick condemnation from European nations, which have charged that the five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were being made scapegoats. A Western medical study, released too late for the trial, said the infections occurred before the medical workers came to Libya.
...
But Libyans strongly supported a conviction. A few dozen relatives of infected children - about 50 of whom have died of AIDS - waited outside the court holding poster-sized pictures of their children and placards reading "Death for the children killers" and "HIV made in Bulgaria.

Pretty gross, right?

International officials have decried the conviction, insisting the judiciary's using them as scapegoats for the larger HIV crisis. Good old Condoleeza Rice had this to say:

We understand very much that there are children who have suffered and we are concerned for their suffering, and that of their families... But we also are concerned that these medics will be allowed to go home at the earlie[st] possible date. These are people who deserve to go home, and we are very disappointed at the outcome of this verdict.

Well we should hope so. Actually, we would have hoped Condi (Cunty?) and her pals would have been more proactive about this whole thing. Seriously, seven years? Sort of gives new meaning to preposterous, no?