A senior doctor has been jailed in Sweden after having unprotected sex with two men despite knowing he was HIV positive. The physician was sentenced by Stockholm District Court to ten months in jail for reckless endangerment and ordered to pay one of the men SEK 26,900 (USD 3,512) in compensation.
Only one of the men that the doctor had sex with has been diagnosed with HIV, and the defence argued that it was possible he was infected by somebody else, according The Local.
The doctor was also facing a further charge of aggravated assault and an alternative charge relating to causing the infection. These charges were, however, dismissed by the court as it could not be proved who was responsible for the spread of the deadly disease.
Elisabeth Massi Fritz, the lawyer representing the two men, said in a statement to news agency TT that the ruling will be appealed. “The prosecutor and I agreed that we would appeal if any of the charges were to be dismissed,” she said.
Ms Massi Fritz added that she was disappointed, but not surprised, that the additional charges had been dropped. “There can be no other person that has infected my client,” she said. “But we have to obtain a supplementary investigation to prove this.”
The court concluded that, as a doctor, the accused should have been aware of the rules of conduct of the Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control (SMI). The judge also said that the practitioner’s actions should be considered as especially serious as he had threatened the lives of his sexual partners.
[…] L’accusa formale, formulata il 18 novembre dal tribunale di Stoccolma (che emanò un mandato d’arresto internazionale) si riferisce al rifiuto di Julian Assange di sottoporsi ad un controllo medico sulle malattie sessualmente trasmissibili dopo aver avuto rapporti sessuali non protetti con due donne consenzienti. Per dare un peso al capo di accusa, basti pensare che per un motivo quasi simile la magistratura svedese condannò nello scorso giugno, con appena 10 mesi…. […]