Berlin (AFP)

The nurse who performed blood transfusions to sports clients of Dr Mark Schmidt unveiled on Friday some details on the operation of the vast doping network "Aderlass", whose trial opened Wednesday in Munich.

The doctor, the main accused, is appearing with four accomplices including nurse Diana S., who was on the stand Friday.

Justice has so far identified 23 of their clients, in cycling and endurance winter sports.

To earn a little money, Diana S. said that she traveled around Europe by car.

She would draw or transfuse blood, sometimes in hotel rooms, sometimes in the back seat of a vehicle.

The single mother of three claimed, often crying, that she had had a bad conscience throughout her collaboration with the German doctor, which she said began in 2017.

"I had money problems, but I wanted to quit several times," she said, according to German media present at the trial.

"I told him that I was too nervous and that I was too scared, I always left with panic. But he always had the same argument: he had helped me."

On several occasions, she went abroad in the doctor's car, equipped with the necessary blood storage equipment.

"Once," she said, "the juicer made so much noise that mattresses were placed against the door and window of the hotel room so as not to attract attention."

She was ordered to dump the remains of her manipulations on her return trips, as far as possible from the place of the operation, in a landfill, and disposing of the bags of blood and the stickers separately.

Dr Schmidt, she said, paid her 200 euros per operation.

She received precise instructions by messaging her phone: she was told where to go, with what car, to whom to withdraw or inject blood and in what quantity.

According to the indictment, Dr Schmidt, 42, in preventive detention for 16 months, has doped athletes since at least 2011.

The case came to the fore on February 27, 2019, when Austrian police raided the site of the Nordic Ski World Championships in Tyrol.

Five athletes were arrested on the spot and Mark Schmidt was arrested the same day by German police in Erfurt (center).

The next hearing is scheduled for Tuesday.

© 2020 AFP