Scientists have cast doubt on charges that five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor deliberately infected Libyan children with HIV.

The medics could face the death penalty if found guilty by a court in Tripoli later this month.

An international team analysed samples taken from the infected patients.

Writing in Nature, they said their work showed the HIV subtype involved began infecting patients in Libya well before the medical workers arrived in 1998.

So, wait: are they saying that the humanitarian medics weren’t deliberately trying to spread the AIDS virus?

That’s kind of, y’know, unbelievable.