President George W. Bush on Monday urged Libya to free five Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death on charges of infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

“The position of the United States is the nurses ought to be free,” Bush told reporters during an Oval Office meeting between him and visiting Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov.

The nurses were convicted last year of deliberately infecting more than 400 children at a hospital in Benghazi.

They insist they are innocent and that the only evidence against them is confessions extracted under torture.

Bush said he and Parvanov discussed the issue at length.

“We have made our position known to the Libyan government. There should be no confusion in the Libyan government’s mind, that those nurses should be, not only spared their life, but out of prison, and we’ll continue to make that message perfectly clear,” he said.