DIPLOMATS from European Union member and candidates countries attended this week's hearings in the Benghazi criminal court in the trial of the six Bulgarian medics accused of infecting more than 400 Libyan children with HIV.

For the first time since the beginning of the criminal trial in July this year, diplomats from Belgium, Italy, France, Greece, The Czech Republic and Poland were present in the courtroom.

After a seven-hour session, the court rescheduled the trial for October 20, at the request of the defence counsel for the Libyan officers accused of using torture to extract information from the accused.

So far the trial has been adjourned several times, following a series of requests by the Libyan officials' defence counsel, citing various reasons.

The court heard arguments from the lawyers for the Bulgarian, Libyan and the Palestinian medics.

A lawyer for several families of infected children filed a demand for compensation of an additional 16 million Libyan dinars. The lawyer said that a report by two experts on HIV, Luc Montagnier and Vittorio Colizzi, was based on false information, and that the confessions of the medics had been voluntary.

The Bulgarian lawyer for the six medics, Plamen Yalnuzov, cited new evidence regarding the innocence of the Bulgarians, which he had found in documents provided by the families of the infected children.

According to the families, some of the children were infected with HIV before the six Bulgarians started work in the Benghazi children's hospital.

Yalnuzov said that the hospital had not warned the families how to protect themselves, and that it had announced the AIDS cases in November 1998.

Yalnuzov said that the trial was a historic event because it was based on fabricated charges, confessions extorted with torture, and pseudo-scientific conclusions.

The court expelled from the courtroom for contempt of the court the first secretary of the Bulgarian embassy in Tripoli, Emilia Dimitrova, and banned her from attending future sessions.

The reason for the decision was Dimitrova's remarks aimed at one of the defendants in the torture case, Djuma Misheria, who allegedly winked at Dimitrova upon entering the courtroom.

According to the court, Dimitrova insulted Misheria and disrupted proceedings. Dimitrova, however, said that she admonished Misheria to behave himself.

Misheria said he thought Dimitrova was a Bulgarian journalist.

By mid-week, it was not known whether the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry would request that Dimitrova be allowed to attend the hearings. One of her major tasks in Libya is to provide support to the six medics.