Libya: Sentencing of foreign medical workers - timeline
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Timeline
- May 2007. A criminal court in Tripoli (the capital of Libya) dismisses defamation charges against five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, who had been accused of criminally defaming Libyan police officers and a doctor by accusing them of using torture to secure confessions.
- December 2006. The five Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian doctor are sentenced to death for deliberately infecting more than 400 Libyan children with HIV.
- October 2006. It is reported that nearly 400 children infected with HIV/AIDS have recently been sent for treatment in Italy and France, at the expense of the Libyan government.
- July 2006. Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor being retried on charges of intentionally infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV/AIDS plead not guilty at a court in Tripoli.
- July 2006. The US Food and Drug Administration approves a license for an HIV/AIDS treatment that combines three commonly used drugs in one pill, thereby making it easier for patients to keep to their drug regimen and increasing hope for the prevention of the emergence of drug-resistant strains of HIV.
- May 2006. Officials in Bulgaria express "deep concern and worry" after a Bulgarian newspaper publishes cartoons satirising Libyan leader Col Moamer al-Kadhafi and Libya's justice system.
- December 2005. Libya’s supreme court overturns the convictions of the medical staff sentenced to death in May 2004 on charges of infecting children with HIV/AIDS; Libya, US, and EU negotiators reach a deal to set up a fund to help families of the children infected with HIV.
- June 2005. Libya's supreme court decides to delay its ruling on the appeal lodged by the medical staff against their death sentences; nine Libyan police officers and a Libyan doctor accused of using torture to get confessions from the Bulgarian nurses are acquitted by a Libyan court.
- March 2005. The five Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian doctor appeal to a Libyan court against their death sentences, imposed in May 2004, for deliberately infecting children with HIV.
- September 2004. The president of the European Commission (EC), Romano Prodi, visits Libya for talks with Libyan leader Col Moamer al-Kadhafi, reportedly including discussions on the death sentence imposed in May against five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor.
- May 2004. Bulgarian government spokesmen condemn the death sentences pronounced on May 6 on the five Bulgarian nurses in Benghazi, Libya.
- May 2004. The medical staff accused of deliberately infecting children with HIV are sentenced to death by a court in the eastern city of Benghazi.
- December 2003. The USA and the UK announce that Libya has agreed to disclose and dismantle its programme to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) after some nine months of secret negotiations.
- August 2003. The governments of Libya, the UK, and the USA reach agreement on a US$2.7 billion settlement between Libya and the families of 270 victims who died when Pan American World Airways (Pan Am) Flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.
- July 2002. The UN's 14th International AIDS Conference is held in Barcelona, Spain, shortly after the publication of an annual report on the global AIDS epidemic indicating that some 20 million people had died of AIDS-related diseases since the AIDS/HIV syndrome was first identified in the early 1980s and some 40 million people were currently infected by HIV, 28.5 million of them in Africa.
- January 2002. It is reported that an international team of researchers working in Gombe national park in Tanzania discover a 23-year-old wild chimpanzee infected with the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), a relative of HIV, the cause of AIDS.
- June 2001. The UN General Assembly convenes a special session on HIV/AIDS to launch the UN's global AIDS fund; in his keynote speech to the assembly UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan says that the world had begun to wake up to the “nightmare” of the epidemic and is at a turning point.
- September 2000. At a scientific meeting held at the Royal Society in London evidence is put forward to refute a theory propounded in a book by Edward Hooper, The River, published in 1999, that the worldwide AIDS epidemic had originated in the development of an experimental vaccine for polio in Africa in the 1950s.
- July 2000. The 13th international AIDS conference, sponsored by the World Health Organisation (WHO), is held in Durban, South Africa.
- September 1995. Col Moamer al-Kadhafi announces some 25,000–30,000 Palestinian refugees in Libya will be expelled.
- July 1994. World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates indicate that the number of people suffering from AIDS had increased in one year from 2,500,000 to 4,000,000, whilst another 16,000,000 adults and 1,000,000 children worldwide were infected with HIV.
- January 1992. WHO estimates indicate that the total number of officially reported cases of AIDS worldwide has risen to 446,681, whilst an estimated 11,000,000 people are carrying HIV.
- November 1991. The USA and UK authorities charge two Libyan nationals over their alleged involvement in the explosion of a bomb on an aircraft over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.
- June 1990. The sixth international conference on HIV/AIDS is held in San Francisco, USA, where it is reported that between 6-8 million cases of HIV infection have been reported worldwide.
- December 1988. A Boeing 747 passenger aircraft belonging to the US airline Pan Am crashes on the town of Lockerbie, near Dumfries in Scotland, killing all 259 passengers and crew, as well as 11 other people.
- May 1987. The recent emergence of the HIV/AIDS virus is a key topic of discussion at the 40th World Health Assembly held in Geneva, Switzerland.
- March 1977. The official name of Libya, the Libyan Arab People's Republic, is changed to the "Popular Socialist Libyan Arab Jamahiriyah", as part of Col al-Kadhafi’s plans for a "socialist revolution".
- April 1973. Col Moamer al-Kadhafi, president of the ruling Revolutionary Command Council, calls for the immediate launch of a “cultural revolution to destroy imported ideologies, whether they are Eastern or Western” and for the construction of a society based upon the principles of the Islam.
- January 1970. The membership of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), the military junta which overthrew King Idris in September 1969, is made public for the first time; the RCC is led by Col Moamer al-Kadhafi.
- September 1969. King Idris of Libya is deposed in a bloodless military coup; Col Moamer al-Kadhafi, aged 27, is appointed commander-in-chief of the Libyan armed forces.
