TIMELINE: Libyan trials of foreign medics

(Reuters) - Libya's highest judicial body said on Tuesday it had commuted the death sentences against six foreign medics to life imprisonment.

Following is a chronology of key events in the case:

February 1999 - Nineteen Bulgarian medical workers are detained in investigation into how children at a hospital in Benghazi became infected with HIV. Thirteen are later freed.

February 7, 2000 - Trial formally opens in Tripoli of six Bulgarians, a Palestinian doctor and nine Libyans accused of deliberately infecting the children.

June 2000 - The six Bulgarians say the confessions at the centre of their case were extracted through torture.

June 2, 2001 - After 12 adjournments, trial begins in earnest.

September 3, 2003 - French doctor Luc Montagnier testifies the epidemic broke out a year before the arrival of the Bulgarians.

September 8 - Libyan prosecutors demand death sentences for the six Bulgarians and the Palestinian.

May 6, 2004 - Five Bulgarian nurses -- Nasya Nenova, Snezhana Dimitrova, Valentina Siropolu, Christiana Valcheva and Valia Cherveniashka -- and the Palestinian doctor, Ashraf Alhajouj, are sentenced to death for deliberately infecting the children. The Bulgarian doctor, Zdravko Georgiev, is released on time served. The nine Libyan defendants are acquitted.