Siropulo, Valya Chervenyashka and Snezhana Dimitrova. They later became widely known as "the Benghazi Six". Libyan HIV victims Well over 400 children were infected with HIV at the El-Fatih Children's Hospital. Some were receiving treatment in Europe. The death toll went up to 50. Parents and relatives of the children protested, and demanded that death penalties be carried out against those responsible. Libyan prime minister Shukri Ghanem insisted that the outcome of the trial was entirely a judicial matter. In a statement broadcast on Al Jazeera, Ghanem said that all efforts should now be focused on the infected children, "who are subject to a death sentence each day." The families of the infected children also demanded compensation for the actions taken by the convicted medics; figures of up to $10 million per family were mentioned. In July 2007, Libya announced a settlement had been reached, with $400 million going to the 426 victims' families in exchange for conversion of the nurses' sentences from death to life in prison. The defendants Initially, 23 foreign medical personnel, mostly Bulgarian, were arrested; 17 were subsequently released and returned to Bulgaria. Additionally, 11 Libyan nationals were arrested and charged with the alleged crimes. Doctor Zdravko Georgiev went to Libya to see his wife (Valtcheva) and was subsequently detained and tried on the charge of illegally transacting in foreign currency. Several Libyans were also arrested and tried on non-capital offences—Abdul Azis Husein Mohammed Shembesh, Abdul Menam Ahmed Mohammed al-Sherif, Idris Maatuk Mohammed al-Amari, Salim Ibrahim Suleyman Abe Garara, Mansur al-Mansur Saleh al-Mauhub, Nureddin Abdulhamid Halil Dagman and Saad Musa Suleyman al-Amruni. Ashraf Ahmed al-Hadzhudzh Ashraf al-Hadzhudzh was defendant number one in the case. In the prosecution's view he was a man in a deadly criminal ring of female nurses dedicated to a plot involving agents of foreign governments; large sums of money; illegal, adulterous sex; and illegal alcohol. He was convicted of murdering 426 Libyan children in carrying out the plot, with the intention of destabilizing the country. He was an intern who started working at the hospital two months before news of the epidemic broke out. His family fled Libya to the Netherlands because, according to them, they had been portrayed by the Libyan media as "killers of innocent children". Ashraf's cousin in the Palestinian Territories As'ad El-Hajouj told the Turkish Daily News that Ashraf had lost an eye and that one of his