Free the Benghazi Six

These 6 convenient foreign scapegoats, comprising 5 Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor (Kristiyana Valcheva, Nasiya Nenova, Valentina Siropulo, Valya Chervenyashka, Snezhana Dimitrova, and Dr Ashraf Jum'a al-Hajuj), were rounded up in the Libyan city of Benghazi, imprisoned, and charged with deliberately spreading a lethal infection, a charge to which they confessed under torture.

After five and a half years in judicial limbo, a Kafkaesque high court judge ignored expert evidence that the infections must have begun before the healthcare workers had even set foot in Libya, and ordered them to be executed for causing 400 children to be infected with the HIV virus in the hospital where they had been employed. Expert witness statements were mistranslated, and it seems sheer xenophobia took over, as the Benghazi six were sentenced to death by firing squad.

Local ignorance runs rife, as friends of those who died danced on to the streets to welcome the verdicts with whoops of joy. The condemned medics are awaiting appeal whilst profoundly inadequate "quiet diplomacy" is being urged on the Bulgarian government. This is simply not enough. If you can help, contact the Bulgarian Medics Solidarity Project.