New evidence in Libya death penalty case
New molecular evidence, published online by Nature this week, sheds significant doubt on the charges against six medical workers facing the death penalty in Libya. They are charged with deliberately contaminating more than 400 children with HIV in 1998.
An international team has used the genetic sequences of the viruses isolated from the patients to reconstruct the exact history, or "family tree" of the outbreak. Analysing mutations that accumulate over time has allowed the researchers to work out when different events occurred. The Brief Communication shows that the subtype of HIV involved began infecting patients well before the medical workers arrived in Libya in 1998.The trial of the six ended in Tripoli on 4 November, and a verdict is expected on 19 December. A body of scientific evidence already indicates that the outbreak was caused not by deliberate transmission, but by poor hospital hygiene. These results, by Oliver G. Pybus and colleagues, provide the first independent molecular confirmation.An accompanying news article from Nature discusses the case and how important this new evidence could be. Phylogenetic HIV analyses have been used in court cases worldwide involving allegations of accidental or deliberate HIV infection. Thomas Leitner of Los Alamos National Laboratory has provided forensic HIV evidence in more than 30 such cases over the past 15 years. He describes the Nature paper as "compelling evidence that the outbreak had started before the accused could have started it."
CONTACT Oliver G. Pybus (Oxford University, UK)Tel: +44 1865 271 274; E-mail: oliver.pybus@zoo.ox.ac.uk Vittorio Colizzi (University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Italy)Tel: +39 34 7831 2155; E-mail: colizzi@uniroma2.it