Two former senior officials of the Muammar Gaddafi regime in Libya are responsible for infecting the children in the hospital in Benghazi with HIV for which Bulgarian medical nurses were condemned. This is said in a France Presse report. The disclosure derives from written notes made by the former PM of that country Shukri Ghanem found after his death in 2012. Ghanem quoted Mohammed el Khader, member of the Commission in Libya that investigated the release of the Bulgarian nurses. According to him the head of military intelligence Abdullah Senussi had said that together with the head of the secret services Moussa Koussa he injected 232 children with the HIV-virus. The affair might have been revenge to the Eastern city of Benghazi that used to rebel against the Gaddafi regime, or aimed to present the country as a victim of international terrorism. In the trial that followed five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were condemned. They spent eight years in a Libyan prison – from 1999 till 2007.
