One of their lawyers, Othman al-Bizanti, told AFP it would be "very difficult" for the six detainees to be freed during the retrial, which is expected Tuesday to hear from both defence and prosecution witnesses.

"The tribunal may consent tomorrow to open an inquiry into the torture (of the defendants)," Bizanti had said on Monday.

During police interrogations, two of the nurses apparently confessed but they later testified in court that they had done so under torture. All the defendants have asserted their innocence.

The six, who were first detained in 1999, were condemned to death in May 2004 after an initial trial in Benghazi in a case that strained ties between Tripoli and Sofia.

The supreme court ordered a retrial following an appeal last December.

The nurses and doctor, who worked in a hospital in the eastern city of Benghazi, were accused of having infected 426 children there with HIV, of whom 52 have since died of AIDS.

In Sofia earlier this month, Bulgarian foreign ministry spokesman Dimitar Tsanchev confirmed reports that the defence have given the Tripoli court a list of 211 instances in which the nurses were subjected to psychological pressure.

The torture claims were "particularly important to disprove the accusations" made against the five, Tsanchev said.

According to Bulgarian newspaper reports, police officers forced the nurses to undress before them, put insects on their bodies and set dogs on them.

The five women were also kept without water and denied sleep in a tiny cell where they had to urinate in a juice box or a plastic bag. And police officers threatened to infect them with AIDS, the reports added.

The defence maintains that lack of hygiene at the hospital was the cause of the spread of the HIV virus.

At the request of Libyan authorities, Professor Luc Montagnier, a French researcher and a co-discoverer of the AIDS virus, prepared a report in 2003 on the presence of the virus in the hospital before the arrival of the nurses.

He concluded that the infections were attributable to hygiene problems.

At the start of the retrial earlier in July, Judge Huweissa said the five nurses and the doctor were charged with having "spread an epidemic".

His statement prompted one of the nurses to declare: "I am a mother and I treated them as my children."

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