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, Igor Giorgadze, a former state security minister turned-opposition figure, claimed. He said he managed to acquire over 100,000 pages of documents about the research done at the Richard Lugar Center for Public Health. The biomedical facility was opened near capital, Tbilisi in 2011 and is officially part of a network of labs studying various infectious diseases. According to Giorgadze, the documents include a list of 30 individuals who allegedly died in the facility from Hepatitis C in December 2014, 24 of them on the same day. The center has long been viewed with suspicion in Russia, with some officials, including FSB chief Nikolay Patrushev, alleging that it was involved in bioweapons research.