A court in Libya has heard the closing remarks for the defence in the case of the six foreign medics accused of deliberating infecting 426 children with HIV at a hospital in Benghazi; 52 have since died of AIDS.
The five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor have been in custody since 1999, and face a possible death sentence.
At the first trial in May 2004 the six were found guilty and sentenced to death by firing squad.
The ensuing international uproar resulted in Libya's supreme court ordering a retrial following an appeal in December 2005.
A series of adjournments since the re-trial began in May, has seen the process drag on, but now a date has been set for the final session, November 4th.
The defence has reiterated that poor hygiene and neglect led to the infection of the children with HIV, and reminded the court that those claims are supported by international scientists who have declared that the epidemic was not through injections but through the re-use of syringes.
Lawyer Touhami Toumi representing the Palestinian doctor said the epidemic in the hospital was not because of deliberate injections (of HIV) but because of poor hygiene, neglect and lack of equipment.
French doctor Luc Montagnier, who first detected the HIV virus, has said it emerged in the Benghazi hospital in 1997, a year before the medics arrived and at the first trial testified that the children were most probably infected through negligence and poor hygiene.
Also a 2003 inquiry by an international specialist at the request of Libyan authorities concluded that the hospital infections were the result of poor hygiene.
Nevertheless the medics were found guilty and sentenced to death.
The six medics have denied the charges in both their first and second trials and have repeatedly testified that they were tortured to make them confess.
Othman Bizanti, a lawyer for the Bulgarian nurses, has told the court torture was used on the accused to force them to make confessions and one of the nurses had tried to commit suicide because of the experience.
Bizanti said that in 1997 before the nurses came to Libya, 207 cases of HIV infection had been found in Benghazi that had never resulted in any legal proceedings, and he questioned why the authorities had not followed them up.
He has demanded the court find the Bulgarians not guilty.
Toumi said the six were imprisoned in substandard conditions, and on one occasion, in the earlier stages of detention, were being confined with police dogs under considerable police pressure.
In June 2005 a Libyan court acquitted nine Libyan policemen and a doctor of torturing the medics.
The case questions Libya's human rights record, which has been seen as a hurdle to improved links with the West, at a time when Washington is in the process of resuming full diplomatic ties with Tripoli after decades of hostility.
To date the court has rejected all demands by lawyers to release the medics on parole, arguing the charges are too serious for the defendants to be free.
Bulgaria has the backing of both the U.S. and the European Union in saying the medics are innocent.