TRIPOLI (Reuters):

Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor could face the firing squad if a Libyan court convicts them tomorrow on charges of deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with the virus that causes AIDS.

Concluding a retrial regarded by the outside world as a test of justice in Libya, the court will make a decision that, either way, is likely to have repercussions on the North African country's gradual rapprochement with the West.

The six are accused of intentionally infecting 426 Libyan children with HIV at a hospital in Benghazi in the late 1990s. The prosecution has demanded the death penalty.

"We are fully confident that the accused group is criminal and will be convicted," Ramadan Faitori, a spokesman for the HIV-infected children's families, told Reuters.

Defence lawyer Othman Bizanti told Reuters: "No one can predict the verdict. A just verdict would represent the real and legal truth, which we presented to the court in our pleading."

The medics were convicted in a 2004 trial and sentenced to death by firing squad. But the Supreme Court quashed the ruling last year and ordered the case be returned to a lower court.

Miscarriage of justice

Rights groups the world over have rallied to the medics' defence to stop what they say may be a miscarriage of justice.

But in Benghazi, where more than 50 of the infected children have died, there is profound public anger against the nurses and international efforts to free them.

State-controlled media want a guilty verdict for the six, who have been in detention since 1999.

"We say to everyone: Our children's blood is precious," Aljamahirya newspaper wrote.

Al-Shams newspaper wrote: "It's very difficult to understand the stance of those in solidarity with the accused.

"Who deserves greater reason for solidarity - The children who are dying without having committed any offence, or those in white coats who distributed death and wiped the smile from the lips of hundreds of families?"

United States Assistant Secretary of State David Welch, who helped negotiate a full resumption of diplomatic relations between the United States and Libya, arrived in Tripoli last Friday and discussed "issues which hinder improvements in relations" with Libyan officials, the Libyan news agency Jana reported.

It gave no details. Welch has previously said a way should be found for the nurses to return home.

The case has hampered Tripoli's process of rapprochement with the West, which moved up a gear when it abandoned its pursuit of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in 2003.

But analysts say freeing the defendants would put the focus on alleged negligence and poor hygiene in Libyan hospitals, which Western scientists say are the real culprits in the case.

Bizanti has said that in 1997 - a year before the nurses came to Libya - about 207 cases of HIV infection had been found in Benghazi that had not resulted in any legal proceedings. He has questioned why the authorities have not followed them up.