Aids is a major killer throughout Africa
A court in Libya has said there is no evidence of a plot to undermine state security in the case of seven foreign medical workers accused of infecting children with HIV.
The People's Court in Tripoli, which deals with matters of state security, has referred the case to an ordinary criminal court.
The Palestinian doctor and six Bulgarian medical workers on trial have been in detention for three years.
The decision makes their case less fraught, but they still face charges carrying the death sentence.
Mossad and CIA suspected
Bulgarian public opinion had been alarmed when the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, spoke about a possible conspiracy by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad or the American CIA.
But in Sunday's hearing at the People's Court, attended by foreign diplomats, the Libyan judge said the only incontestable fact so far was that a number of children had died.
The Bulgarian foreign minister had visited Tripoli at the end of last year to discuss the case with Colonel Gaddafi and his son, Seif al-Islam.
It seems these contacts are now bearing fruit.
The defendants, who all deny the charges, have been moved out of prison and placed under house arrest.
Some of them say they were forced to make confessions under torture.
Their Libyan lawyer has argued to the court that the HIV infections were probably due to poor hygiene and the reuse of syringes in the hospital where the children contracted the virus.