Two more witnesses for the prosecution are to be questioned as Tripoli court convenes on August 29 for the retrial of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor charged with intentionally infecting some 400 Libyan children with HIV.

The seventh hearing of the retrial will also see the pleadings of the parties.

At the beginning of August Libyan experts tried to convince the Tripoli Criminal Court that the HIV epidemic outbreak was deliberately started by Bulgaria's nurses, just as their report from 2003 stated. They claim that a genetically modified virus was kept in banks containing HIV-infected blood plasm. The banks were found in Kristiana Vulcheva's home.

Their 61-page report was submitted as evidence in the previous trial, which ended with the six convicted of intentionally infecting 426 Libyan children with AIDS virus when they worked in a Benghazi hospital.

The sixth hearing of the court also presented the so-called "lighter charges" that were raised against the Bulgarians only - drinking and distilling alcohol in public places and illegally transacting in foreign currency.

The five Bulgarian nurses have already spent seven years in Libyan jail, and say they have been tortured to extract false confessions. After they were once found guilty and sentenced to death by a firing squad, a higher court ordered a retrial.

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