Libya abruptly adjourned yesterday the retrial of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of deliberately infecting hundreds of children at a Libyan hospital with the virus that causes AIDS.

“The retrial case was postponed and will resume on June 13, with the defendants remaining in detention,” judge Mahmoud Chaouissa said. Lawyers for the six medics, who have been in jail since 1999, had asked the court to release them on bail but the judge dismissed the demand.

Lawyers and representatives of the children families’ voiced confidence that the delay would not adversely affect the case. Idriss Lagha, a spokesman for the families of the infected children said: “The start of the retrial is good and the postponement is a normal court decision.”

The medics first stood trial in 2004 on charges they infected 426 Libyan children with the HIV virus when they worked in a Benghazi hospital. Around 50 of the children have died and the case has fuelled outrage among the families of the victims.

The five Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor were sentenced to death in May 2004.

Bulgaria and its allies, the United States and the European Union, insist the nurses are innocent, citing evidence they were tortured to confess and testimony by world AIDS experts that the spread of AIDS started before they began work at the hospital. Libya’s supreme court overturned death sentences for the six medics in December and ordered a retrial at a court in Tripoli.

The victims’ families have demanded 4.4 billion euro ($5.43 billion) from a group of international donors trying to settle the dispute, although Bulgaria itself has refused to pay any compensation, saying it would be a recognition of guilt.