/ 30 May 2007

Dutch gang arrested for spreading HIV at sex parties

Dutch police said on Wednesday they had arrested three men accused of drugging gay men at sex parties, raping them and injecting them with a cocktail of HIV-infected blood.

“Two of the suspects have admitted to having injected at least five victims with HIV-infected blood,” police spokesperson Sylvia Sanders told Dutch NOS public radio.

According to the police the gang would contact other gay men on the internet and invite them to weekly sex parties in the northern city of Groningen.

They would then administer the so-called date-rape drug GHB to the men and then sexually abuse them. In several cases, they even injected them with a cocktail of HIV-infected blood.

The police said the suspects committed the crimes for a kick and because they felt “sex without a condom was the most pure”.

The two suspects who admitted to a part of the crimes named five victims who were injected with HIV-infected blood but only one of those named has filed a complaint with the police, Sanders said.

The three HIV-positive suspects, aged in their thirties and forties, have been provisionally charged with causing grievous bodily harm, sexual abuse and drugs offences. A date for the trial has not been set yet. — AFP