Bulgaria is hoping for a retrial of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor sentenced to death in Libya for infecting hundreds of children with HIV, the country's Justice Minister Georgi Petkanov said on Monday.

Georgi Petkanov hoped that the Libyan court could return the case for reconsideration rather than confirm the verdict.

He also made a statement that Bulgaria believed the medical workers were innocent and his country would make no compensation for the victims' family, as "this would mean an admission of guilt."

Petkanov also responded to media reports that Tripoli might try to exchange the nurses for Abdel Baset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi, a Libyan convicted of killing 270 people in the 1988 Lockerbie plane bombing, who is held in a Glasgow prison.

"We haven't received any such proposals from their side yet, but it is possible they will come up with one," Petkanov said.

The six accused medical workers were imprisoned in 1999 in Libya for injecting around 400 children with HIV-tainted blood and were sentenced to death in 2004.

About 50 of the 400 children infected have died, sparking a humanitarian crisis and prompting calls for vengeance from the victims' families.

However, Bulgaria and its allies, the European Union and the United States, have condemned the verdicts, saying they are based on forced confessions.

They also say the Libyan court ignored a testimony from AIDS experts that the epidemic started before the nurses arrived at the hospital and was probably caused by poor hygiene.

Source: Xinhua