19/02/2007 (Agence Europe) - Addressing the plenary session of the Committee of the Regions (CoR) on 13-14 February in Brussels, which Bulgarians and Romanians attended for the first time, CoR president Michel Delebarre declared his support for the five Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian doctor sentenced to death by the Libyan Criminal Court on 19 December 2006 for, “having deliberately inoculated more than 4000 children with the AIDS virus at the Benghazi hospital in 1999”. In his declaration, Delebarre strongly condemned the “verdict of the Libyan Criminal Court…the Committee of the Regions reiterates its strongest opposition to the death sentence, whose ban is a constitutive element of human dignity and fundamental to the rule of European law”. Delebarre adds that, “In linking up the multiple support initiatives of our co-citizens, organised throughout Europe, we call for their swift release, given that the proof of their innocence provided for the accused is solid. We also request a road map for their release that takes into account the context of the epidemic in Gaza. (gb)