A court on Tuesday convicted five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor of deliberately infecting 400 children with the HIV virus and condemned them to death, provoking shouts of approval from the children’s relatives.

“God is great!” yelled Ibrahim Mohammed al-Aurabi, the father of an infected child, as soon as the presiding judge finished reading the verdict in the Tripoli courtroom.

Bulgaria swiftly condemned the decision, and reiterated its belief that the children were infected by unhygienic conditions in their Benghazi hospital.

“Sentencing innocent people to death is an attempt to cover up the real culprits and the real reasons for the AIDS outbreak in Benghazi,” said parliamentary speaker.

The accused did not react as the judgement was delivered. They have the right to appeal to the Supreme Court.

The presiding judge, Mahmoud Hawissa, took only seven minutes to confirm the presence of the accused — who all answered “yes” in Arabic — and read out his verdict and sentence in the most politicised court process in modern Libyan history.

The defendants, detained for nearly seven years, had previously been convicted and condemned to death, but Libyan judges granted them a retrial last year after international protests. Bulgaria contends the children were infected by unhygienic practices at the Libyan hospital.