Russia on Wednesday denounced as “exceedingly cruel” the death sentences passed by a Libyan court on six foreign medics convicted of deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with the virus that causes AIDS, the Reuters news agency reported.

The court sentenced five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death on Tuesday, saying they deliberately infected 426 children with the HIV virus at a hospital in the late 1990s.

“The sentence … raises some very serious questions and I agree with those who think it is exceedingly cruel,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a Moscow news conference.

Lavrov said he had already urged the Libyan leadership to show mercy, adding: “I do not know what scope there is in Libyan legislation for saving these people’s lives but it goes without saying that I am calling precisely for that.”

The medics deny infecting the children, more than 50 of whom have since died.

Bulgaria, the European Union and Amnesty International criticized the verdict on Tuesday. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she hoped the medics would be allowed to return home at the earliest possible date.

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