Tripoli, Lebanon ? A court convicted five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor Tuesday of deliberately infecting 400 children with HIV and sentenced them to death, despite scientific evidence the youngsters had the virus before the medical workers came to Libya.

The United States and Europe reacted with outrage to the verdict, which prolongs a case that has hurt Libya’s ties to the West. The six co-defendants already have served seven years in jail.

Earlier this month, an analysis of HIV and hepatitis virus samples taken from some of the children concluded the viral strains were circulating at the hospital where they were treated well before the nurses and doctor arrived in March 1998, according to research published by the journal Nature.

There is widespread anger in Libya about the HIV infections, and the sentence brought cheers. The Libyan media long have depicted the medical workers as guilty.

After the sentence was pronounced, dozens of relatives outside the Tripoli court chanted “Execution! Execution!”

Ibrahim Mohammed al-Aurabi, the father of an infected child, shouted, “God is great! Long live the Libyan judiciary!”

The ruling stunned the defendants. They were convicted and sentenced to death a year ago, but the Libyan Supreme Court ordered a retrial after an international outcry that the first trial was unfair. The case now returns to the Supreme Court for an automatic appeal.

Bulgarian nurses, from left, Cristiana Valcheva and Valya Chervenyashka, Palestinian doctor Ashraf Hajouj, and Bulgarian nurses Valentina Siropulo and Nasya Nenova speak to an unidentified man before the verdict of their trial was read in the courtroom in Tripoli, Libya. A Libyan court Tuesday convicted the five and another defendant of deliberately infecting 400 children with HIV.

“This sentence was another blow, another shock for us,” Zdravko Georgiev, the husband of one of the nurses, Kristiana Valcheva, said in Bulgaria.

The nurses and doctor have been in jail since 1999 on charges that they intentionally spread HIV to more than 400 children at a hospital in Benghazi during what Libya claims was a botched experiment to find a cure for AIDS. Fifty children have died, and the rest have been treated in Europe.

Bulgaria and European officials have blamed the infections on unhygienic practices at the hospital and accuse Libya of making the medical workers scapegoats.

The defendants have claimed they were tortured in detention, and two of the nurses – who are all women – said they were raped. A Libyan court acquitted several Libyan prison officials of the charge.