Swiss Healer Found Guilty of Deliberately Infecting 16 People with HIV

A self-proclaimed healer was convicted Friday by a Swiss court in Bern for deliberately infecting 16 people with HIV. The acupuncturist, Maurice Goeller, has been sentenced to 12 years and nine months in jail.

The prosecutors demanded that the 54-year-old man gets a 15-year sentence for using the pretext of acupuncture and injecting people with HIV-tainted blood, infecting them with the virus from 2001-2005.

Goeller continuously denied the charges and blamed the victims for contracting the virus through unprotected sex and intravenous drug use, reports Reuters.

The case came to the knowledge of authorities after an HIV-positive patient reported at the hospital that he suspected the infection was associated with the acupuncture treatment he received from the amateur Swiss healer.

Most of the victims were the man's former music students and are still alive. A few of them have claimed that the man pricked them with the needle from behind during the course of their treatment.

"The accused and no one else is responsible for the infection of these 16 people," the head of court Urs Essen was quoted as saying in Agence Telegraphique Suisse new agency.

According to court spokesman Rene Graf, the verdict can be appealed.

Officials failed to acquire direct evidence for these allegations, but the DNA tests of all infected victims confirm that they carried the same virus strain.

The accused healer stopped attending his own trial and was free on bail since August. Later, the police authorities barged into his house where he had barricaded himself, and threatened them using a knife.