Organ trafficking

Vatican defends China invite to organ trafficking summit

The Vatican has defended its decision to invite China to a conference on organ trafficking despite its record of using executed inmates as organ donors.

The head of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (PAS) admitted he did not know whether the practice was continuing but said he hoped to encourage change.

Human rights groups say China is still using executed prisoners as a source of organ transplants.

Beijing says forced organ harvesting ended in 2015.

Organ trafficking

China jails 16 for trafficking in organs

Sixteen people including two surgeons have been jailed for between two and five years in China for trafficking in human organs, a practice still widespread in the country.

The group -- which also included an anaesthesiologist, a nurse and an assistant doctor -- were involved in a vast illegal trade in kidneys, according to the judgement cited by the official Xinhua news agency Saturday.

The court in the city of Jinan in the eastern province of Shandong said several defendants had searched online for people selling kidneys nationwide and arranged for tests and matches between sellers and buyers.

Organ trafficking

Egypt arrests 'organ trafficking ring'

Egyptian authorities have arrested doctors, nurses and professors suspected of being involved in an international organ trafficking ring.

The arrests of at least 25 people on Tuesday also included organ buyers and middlemen, the country's Administrative Control Authority said.

Authorities also found "millions of dollars and gold bullion".

It is illegal to purchase organs in Egypt, but poverty drives some to sell their body parts.

The Administrative Control Authority, a powerful anti-corruption body, claimed the network targeted on Tuesday was "made up of Egyptians and Arabs taking advantage of some of the citizens' difficult economic conditions so that they buy their human organs and sell [them] for large sums of money".

Organ trafficking

Ukraine-Born Volfman Arrested in Tirana on Suspicion of Human Organ Trafficking

Boris Igor Volfman, born in Ukraine in 1984, could be involved in the work of an illegal network that is engaged in human organ trafficking from Costa Rica to Kosovo, Kossev news said on Wednesday.

European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX Kosovo) data shows that the network includes several doctors who perform illegal organ transplants and Volfman is one of them, Kossev said. The man, who holds both Russian and Israeli citizenship, has already been arrested over illegal human organ trafficking three times. According to law enforcement, he has been involved in the illegal trade since 2008.

Organ trafficking

Suspected people smugglers 'sold organs of migrant dead'

The investigation by Palermo's anti-mafia unit was launched following the testimony of a 'repentant' people smuggler, Nuredin Atta Wehabrebi, who was sentenced to five years in jail in February this year - one of the first sentences in Italy for trafficking.

According to Wehabrebi, the network was also involved in organ trafficking. According to Italian media including La Repubblica, he told police that traffickers sold the organs of migrants who did not survive the journey to Italy - and even killed some who did not have enough money to pay the fee, in order to sell their organs for up to €15,000.

Wehabrebi is reported to have said he decided to collaborate with the justice system because "too many had died, in particular at Lampedusa on October 3rd, 2013", Il Tempo reported, referring to the shipwreck which killed 359.

Organ trafficking

REP. JOE PITTS: China harvests human organs

In 2014 China said that it would stop harvesting organs from state prisoners. In 2015, we found out that promise was a ruse.

The country’ng any organs from prisoners by January of the next year.

But then China went back, and said (in essence), as long as the prisoners say yes to their organs being donated, it counts as a citizen donation. Dr. Huang told the Beijing Times, “Once the organs from death row prisoners who have voluntarily donated are included in our national distribution system, they are counted as voluntary citizen donations.”

The probles deputy minister of public health, Dr. Jiefu Huang, had announced in 2014 that China would stop harvestim is that we have no way of knowing if these “donations” are really voluntary. When you have a country like China where hospitals are advertising online that you can come and they will get you a liver within weeks, the likelihood is that they’re going out, finding prisoners that will match these transplant tourists that are willing to pay top dollar for an organ, and then executing them.

Organ trafficking

Top Delhi hospital involved in organ trafficking racket

A criminal gang, allegedly including two employees of the high-end hospital, reportedly lured poor individuals to the hospital with the promise to pay them handsomely for their kidneys.

However, what the victims received was a pittance compared to the huge sums their organs were resold for - a price which authorities have not revealed.

Police have arrested five people, saying the gang had used forged documents erroneously showing that the donors were related to those requiring a transplant to fool hospital staff.

Two of those arrested are believed to have been assistants to a senior nephrologist, but the hospital has denied that they were employees of Apollo.

Organ trafficking

Egypt's Islamist Authority blasts ISIS organ harvesting

Dar al-Ifta, Egypt's official religious institution tasked with drafting edicts, issued a fatwa according to which human organ harvesting is "a violation of Sharia," the London-based daily Arab newspaper a-Sharq al-Awasat reported on Sunday.

According to the edict, issued on Saturday, ripping out human organs from a live captive to transplant them in another body is prohibited, whether or not it endangers someone's life.
While ISIS has long argued that Sharia permit harvesting organs of "apostate captives" to save Muslims' lives, even if doing so would lead to captives' death, an Egyptian cleric told a-Sharq al-Awasat: "It is only allowed to harvest organs from a dead body, since a live person is better than a dead one."

Organ trafficking

UN Commission adopted Belarus sponsored resolution on combating trafficking in human organs

On May 27, 2016 Vienna hosted 25th session of the United Nations Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice. At the session, resolution “Preventing and combating trafficking in human organs and trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal” sponsored by Belarus was adopted.

The Belarussian initiative is aimed at attracting broad international attention to such emerging transnational crime as trafficking in human organs. The discussion on Belarussian draft resolution demonstrated the importance of this topic both in the context of rapid development of transplantation medicine and also due to the appearance of information about growing involvement of terrorist groups in crime of human organ trafficking.

The resolution mandates the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to conduct a study on the issue of trafficking in human organs in cooperation with Member States and interested international organizations.

The Belarussian resolution was co-sponsored by Cuba, Ecuador, Indonesia, Russia, Serbia and Spain.