US-funded site in Georgia may have conducted illegal experiments on humans – ex-minister
A US-funded medical facility in Georgia may have been involved in illegal experiments on Georgian citizens, the country's former security minister has claimed, citing leaked documents he obtained.
Igor Giorgadze, a former state security minister turned-opposition figure, has made the groundbreaking revelation during a press conference in Moscow on Tuesday. He said he managed to acquire over 100,000 pages of documents about the research done at the Richard Lugar Center for Public Health, located just outside the capital of Georgia, Tbilisi.
“Preliminary research on the documents … indicates that biologists from the US military medical group in Georgia and private contractors under a federal contract with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) could have indeed been conducting secret experiments on Georgian citizens,” Giorgadze said.
“A whole number of such experiments were lethal for my compatriots,” he added, citing a list of 30 people, who were treated for Hepatitis C in the facility in December 2015. Surprisingly, 24 of the said patients died on the same day, according to the documents.
“Many questions arise, since their cause of death is listed as ‘unknown’ and that no investigation into their deaths was launched,” Giorgadze stated.
In addition to the patient lists, the former official has invoices from the facility, which included rather strange purchases for a health institution, to say the least. Among them were “capsules for toxic compounds” and even ammunition for small arms, according to Giorgadze.
The former official admitted the documents might have been a deliberate disinformation attempt, but as a veteran intelligence officer, he believed them to be genuine. The ex-minister urged the US President Donald Trump to launch an investigation into the facility founded back in 2011, during the Obama administration.
The center was initially operated by Georgia’s Defense Ministry and prompted numerous allegations of bioweapons research and its involvement into outbreaks of epidemic diseases in the region. Georgia’s authorities, however, have repeatedly dismissed such accusations.
The facility has also been viewed with suspicion in Russia, with some top officials, including FSB chief Nikolay Patrushev, alleging that it was involved in bioweapons research.
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