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Leaferne Defrost indoors
Joined: 07 Feb 2004 Total posts: 4785 Location: Graceland, mama Age: 43 Gender: Female |
 Posted: 12-07-2004 19:49 Post subject: |
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Law & Order did an episode about someone being targetted for organs. ("Sonata for Solo Organs", first aired 1991) I've been pawing through episode guides, trying to remember how the bad guys knew who to go after for a kidney, but can't come up with anything. I think it was the surgeon himself--needed an kidney for his wife or daughter, and went through the blood donors' list or something.
I'll let myself out, shall I? |
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 14-08-2004 13:39 Post subject: |
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Pretty shocking (and grim) stuff:
| Quote: | Illegal Organ Business Booms
Translated from the Chinese edition
The Epoch Times
Aug 06, 2004
On July 17, 2004, the Scientific and Technology Museum of Taiwan held an exhibition of human anatomy. At the exhibition, all the human bodies and organs on display were provided by the Medical Association of China. Prior to the exhibition it was alleged that some of the bodies and organs were illegally obtained from executed Chinese prisoners.
The trade in human organs is now a profitable venture in China. Foreigners from Southeast Asia, Taiwan or even Canada seek kidney transplants in China where Shanghai has become the main center for organ transplants. According to reliable sources within the Shanghai Police department, some police officers are conspiring with greedy doctors to sell the organs of dead prisoners for large sums of money.
Between July 20, 1999 and July 1, 2004, at least 1,000 Falun Gong practitioners were tortured to death in China. These practitioners, 52 percent of whom were female, had an average age of 44 years. A recent report alleges that organs from some of these dead Falun Gong practitioners had been removed. This is a clear violation of human rights!
Dalian Human Anatomy Research
Recently, German Doctor Gunther von Hagens, held a human anatomy exhibition that was condemned by many human rights associations. It was revealed by the German media that some of the corpses in Dr. Hagens’ exhibition were those of executed Chinese prisoners. Dr. Hagens admitted that some of the bodies he exhibited had been shot in the head. Bright Mirror Weekly of Germany reported that Dr. Hagens has been trading in human corpses and organs for more than ten years. He has three sites for his business, the biggest in Dalian, located close to three Chinese labor camps. This site was formerly managed by Dr. Sui Hongjin, who hired 170 Chinese employees.
Dr. Hagens’ human anatomy trade is worldwide and an extremely profitable business, receiving many orders from research departments of universities and hospitals around the world. His old manager, Dr. Sui Hongjin, left him and established another company to compete with Dr. Hagens. Many of the specimens exhibited publicly in Beijing and Hong Kong were provided by Dr. Sui Hongjin. Dr. Sui obtains the corpses of the dead prisoners from the Chinese government in the same manner as Dr. Hagens.
Sale of Human Organs Condoned
In China, the removal of the organs of executed prisoners is a practice condoned by the government. Many Chinese policemen, judges, and doctors are all willing to discuss how to obtain organs from dead prisoners for commercial usage.
On June 27, 2001, Wang Guoqi, a doctor specializing in the burn victims unit at the Paramilitary Tianjin General Hospital in Tianjin, testified before the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights of the United States House of Representatives. He said in his testimony that he was sent by the hospital to remove skin and corneas from the corpses of over 100 executed prisoners at a crematorium.
Dr. Thomas Diflo and human rights activist Wu Hongda also testified. Dr. Diflo, who is working in the NYU Medical Center, wrote in his article, published in a May issue of the New York Village Voice that six of his patients who had kidney transplants in China came to him afterwards for medical care. These patients all told him that their new kidneys came from executed prisoners.
Organ Business Boom
Reliable sources report that kidney transplant patients from places such as Southeast Asia, Taiwan and Canada often travel to China to obtain a transplant operation. The cost is about 1 million Taiwan dollars (US,000). The usual arrangements are that after they receive the notification of an available kidney, they immediately travel to China. After spending a week in the hospital, they are provided with a suitable kidney.
On December 12, 2000, The Union Evening News of Singapore carried a detailed report for patients who were considering travelling to China to obtain kidney transplants.
On June 12, 2001, the Voice of America quoted a report from the Globe Post News of Canada that a businessman in Vancouver, arranged for Canadian patients to obtain kidney transplants in Shanghai. The report also pointed out that Shanghai had already become the main location for providing kidney transplants in China.
The Chinese media has reported that, at the beginning of this year, there were many advertisements for transplant kidneys and corneas in hospitals of Shanghai and Liaoning. Some advertisements listed the blood type and age of the donor, and the phone number of the contact person. According to the report, a kidney costs 100,000 yuan (US,000) in Shanyang.
Officials Steal And Trade In Organs From Executed prisoners
On February 16, 2004, the District Court for the City of Huludao in Liaoning Province held a hearing for a lawsuit against the local police station for stealing organs from a corpse. On August 4, 2002, Qiu Pigou coal miner Fang Yanjun, accidentally lost his life in the mine. On the next day, a post mortem examination was conducted by the Nanpiao Medical Examiner.
When Fang Yanjun’s family members arrived, part of his organs were already missing. This had been done without the permission of his family members. The family of Fang Yanjun sued the Police Department of Hulutao City for illegal dissection of the corpse and stealing the organs. They sought compensation of 300,000 yuan (US,000).
On September 21, 2003, The Lanzhou Morning News posted an article, "Should The Family Members Have The Right to Know That The Organs Of Dead prisoners Are Missing?" The article reported in detail that on April 2, 2003, the District Court for the City of Dunhuang in Gansu Province stole and sold organs of three dead prisoners without permission from their family members. The District Court argued that their behaviour was totally legal. They only gave 2,000 yuan (US0) to the family members for compensation.
The Chinese Human Rights and Democratic Activities Information Center of Hong Kong disclosed on August 2, 2001, that the News Director of the Metropolitan Information News in Jiangxi Province, Yao Xiaohong, had been fired. She had reported that the District Court for Pingsiang city in Jiangxi Province had stolen the kidneys from corpses without permission. This action had incurred the wrath of the local government.
China is the country conducting most of the trade in human organs. Organs obtained from the corpses of executed prisoners, if healthy, are being sold to hospitals or patients directly. If the organs are unsuitable for transplant, they are sold to companies such as the ones owned by Dr. Hagens and Dr. Sui. They are displayed all over the world.
Organs of Dead Falun Gong Practitioners "Missing"
In June 2004, Falun Gong practitioners charged that some Falun Gong practitioners, who had been tortured to death in jails, labor camps or police stations, had their organs illegally stolen and sold for transplant usage. Inspection of the corpses of some Falun Gong practitioners, who had been tortured to death, revealed the bodies had been dissected without the authority of their family members. Some of the corpses were missing organs. A source inside the Drug Rehabilitation Center of Guangzhou City reported that doctors there instructed the people inflicting torture, "do not hit the waist, the kidney is useful."
Ren Pengwu, 33, was distributing Falun Gong literature February 16, 2001. He was arrested by the Hulan County police and detained in the Hulan County Second Detention Center. Before dawn, Feb. 21, only five days after his detention, he was dead after being tortured. Without obtaining the family's permission, and under the guise of a "post mortem examination," the Hulan County authorities completely removed all of Ren Pengwu's organs, from his pharynx and larynx to his penis, then hastily cremated his body.
Zuo Zhigang, 33, and worked at a computer store in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province. On May 30, 2001, police from the Public Security Bureau of Shijiazhuang City took him from his work place to the Qiaoxi District Police Station in Shijiazhuang. The police interrogated Zuo Zhigang, using various torture methods, and he was beaten to death the same day. His mutilated corpse revealed that one of his ears was dark purple and there were two big square-shaped holes on the back of his torso, revealing removal of organs. There was a mark on his neck showing that a cord had been pulled tightly around it.
Hao Runjuan of Guangzhou City was the very healthy mother of a two-year-old boy before she was arrested. After being continuously tortured for 22 days by police in the Baiyun Detention Center, she died. Upon her death, the police authorities conducted a post mortem examination without her family member’s knowledge, even though the law requires the signature of a family member to approve an autopsy. When the family was told to identify the body, it was completely unrecognizable, but there were still fresh bloodstains on it. Because the body was so disfigured, none of her family members believed it was Hao Runjuan, even after viewing the body twice. The family had to take the two-year-old son for a DNA blood test to confirm the body was truly his mother's.
Yang Ruiyu of Fuzhou City was an employee at the Real Estate Bureau of Taijiang District. On July 19, 2001, Yang was taken away from her work. Only three days later, Yang died as a result of the abuse. After her death, the Fuzhou police warned Yang's family not to discuss the event with anyone. Yang's colleagues were not allowed to see her body or say goodbye, and no funeral was permitted. When the body was sent to be cremated, it was guarded by police cars, and cremated immediately upon arrival. Yang's husband and daughter were not allowed to view the body. They suspect her organs were harvested from her body.
Sun Ruijian, 29, left home on November 7, 2000, to appeal on behalf of Falun Gong in Beijing. He was arrested by Beijing police. On December 1, his family was told that he had died. They claimed that two Fujian police were sent to bring him back from Beijing and that he died after jumping out of the train at 4:00 p.m. on November 29, somewhere between the cities of Shunchang and Xiayang.
A man who was detained in the Drug Rehabilitation Center of Guangzhou City said that he saw some jailed drug addicts beating a Falun Gong practitioner while a doctor of the center was standing nearby. The doctor said, "Don’t hit the waist, the kidney is useful." He heard doctors at the center tell the detained drug addicts that if they wanted to assault Falun Gong practitioners, they should not hit the waist or the eyes.
This man also saw several young male Falun Gong practitioners from northern China who did not return after being dragged from a detention room. Those Falun Gong practitioners had no families and relatives in Guangzhou and even though they went missing, nobody would ask after them. His observation in the Guangzhou City Drug Rehabilitation Center is that the Falun Gong practitioners from outside areas were often beaten by jailed drug addicts at the request of the center doctors. They also asked the drug addicts to avoid injuring internal organs.
Minghui.net, a website that reports Falun Gong news and information, urgently appeals to the international community to take action about the missing organ incidents, especially those of the Falun Gong practitioners. Also, Minghui.net asked the friends and relatives of the dead Falun Gong practitioners to collect and maintain any and all the evidence for these crimes, so that we may file lawsuit against all the criminal behavior in the future. |
http://english.epochtimes.com/news/4-8-6/22721.html |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17933 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 07-09-2004 15:20 Post subject: |
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Organ trafficking and transplantation pose new challenges
07 Sep 2004
The international trade in human organs is on the increase fuelled by growing demand as well as unscrupulous traffickers. The rising trend has prompted a serious reappraisal of current legislation, while WHO has called for more protection for the most vulnerable people who might be tempted to sell a kidney for as little as US$ 1000.
Increasing demand for donated organs, uncontrolled trafficking and the challenges of transplantation between closely-related species have prompted a serious re-evaluation of international guidelines and given new impetus to the role of WHO in gathering epidemiological data and setting basic normative standards.
There are no reliable data on organ trafficking — or indeed transplantation activity in general — but it is widely believed to be on the increase, with brokers reportedly charging between US$ 100 000 and US$ 200 000 to organize a transplant for wealthy patients. Donors — frequently impoverished and ill-educated — may receive as little as US$ 1000 for a kidney although the going price is more likely to be about US$ 5000.
A resolution adopted at this year’s World Health Assembly (WHA) voiced “concern at the growing insufficiency of available human material for transplantation to meet patient needs,” and urged Member States to “extend the use of living kidney donations when possible, in addition to donations from deceased donors.”
It also urged governments “to take measures to protect the poorest and most vulnerable groups from ‘transplant tourism’ and the sale of tissues and organs, including attention to the wider problem of international trafficking in human tissues and organs.”
Earlier this year, police broke up an international ring which arranged for Israelis to receive kidneys from poor Brazilians at a clinic in the South African port city of Durban. But such highprofile successes merely scratch at the surface.
Countries such as Brazil, India and Moldova — well-known sources of donors — have all banned buying and selling of organs. But this has come at the risk of driving the trade underground.
Behind the growth in trafficking lies the increasing demand for transplant organs.
In Europe alone, there are currently 120 000 patients on dialysis treatment and about 40 000 people waiting for a kidney, according to a report last year by the European Parliamentary Assembly.
It warned that the waiting list for a transplant, currently about three years, would increase to 10 years by 2010, and with it the death rate from the shortage of organs.
In Asia, South America and Africa, there is widespread resistance — for cultural and personal reasons as well as due to the high cost — to using cadaveric organs, or those from dead bodies.
The majority of transplanted organs come from live, often unrelated, donors. Even in the United States, the number of renal or kidney transplants from live donors exceeded those from deceased donors for the first time in 2001.
Yet the Guiding Principles on human organ transplantation, adopted by the WHA in 1991, state that organs should “be removed preferably from the bodies of deceased persons,” and that live donors should in general be genetically related to the recipient.
They also prohibit “giving and receiving money, as well as any other commercial dealing”.
This year’s WHA resolution therefore asked WHO Director-General Dr LEE Jong-wook to consider updating the guiding principles in the light of current practices.
“There is a real risk that standards devised in the 1990s with the emphasis on prohibition will be undermined and we have to react to this,” said Dr Nikola Biller-Andorno, ethicist at WHO’s Department of Ethics, Trade, Human Rights and Health Law. “What is needed is a critical and thorough analysis of the different proposals that have been made particularly with regard to expanding the use of living donors, by providing incentives and/or removing disincentives.” Dr Biller-Andorno said.
Dr Luc Noel, coordinator of the newly created Clinical Procedures team in WHO’s Department of Essential Health Technologies, said part of the review process included examination of how to minimize health risks to living donors after the donation.
“Removing disincentives is a must. Adding incentives is where things get difficult,” Noel said.
For instance, should a donor in a country with no health insurance be offered free coverage in case he or she gets a complication after the operation? And would this qualify as an incentive or removing a disincentive?
A WHO consultation on organ and tissue transplantation in Madrid last October, grouping 37 clinicians, social scientists, ethicists and government officials from 23 countries, reached no consensus on how and where to draw the line between removing disincentives and providing incentives.
The Madrid consultation unanimously agreed that there should be a WHO expert advisory panel both for allogeneic transplantation, involving organs from an organism of the same species, and xenogeneic transplantation, involving those from another species, and for global safety and quality principles for the regulation of organs and tissues.
Noel said there was a need for more epidemiological data and for more global transparency — especially with regard to the long-term health, psychological and socio-economic consequences for both living donors and recipients.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=13008
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 28-09-2004 16:47 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Man sells wife's kidney
A Pakistani man has been accused of selling one of his wife's kidneys without her knowledge.
Muhammad Ashfaq, from Lahore, is then reported to have divorced Zohra Bibi.
The Daily Times says Ashfaq convinced his wife to undergo surgery so they could have children. However Ashfaq reportedly ordered that one of her kidneys be removed.
He sold it for the equivalent of £1,900.
According to the Daily Times Ashfaq divorced his wife after years of marriage.
Local police are expected to press charges against him. |
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1118615.html?menu=news.quirkies |
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| Analis Great Old One Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Total posts: 851 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 28-04-2008 12:59 Post subject: |
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I don't know if it was posted on another thread, but I read interesting news in Libération, 1 february 2008. The article, written by Pierre Prakash, titled "Dismantling of a kidney traffic near New Dehli", said that:
Police found a clandestine hospital in a wealthy house in the town of Gurgaon, near New Dehli. There, organs were transplanted on rich patients, mostly from the USA, Canada, Britain, Saudi Arabia and Greece. They paid 25.000 to 40.000 € for their operation, and were staying in a luxurious guesthouse while waiting for a donor. The organs were taken from poor workers, usually migrants from other indian regions. Taken by fair means or foul. The victims were sent to the network by a number of 'beaters', who worked for a percentage. They used cars equipped with a battery of blood tests. In the best of cases, the 'donors' were paid 900 €. If they refused, they had to comply under the threat of a gun. The police said that it was the greatest organ traffic in India ever found.
Surprisingly, the network was directed by a man, Amit Kumar, who had already been arrested under similar charges. Kumar was in fact Santosh Raut, arrested in Bombay in 1993, for performing illegal kidney transplants. He himself is not a physician. He fled after bailing out. Was arrested at least another time in 2000, his house was searched. Had a tax investigation a few months before, with no one suspecting anything (quite surprising). When the article was published, he was once more on the run, probably in Canada, where he had been a number of times to find new clients.
The police had arrested only a small number of drivers and other accomplices, and one physician (but a true one). They believed that tens of doctors were involved. And that great neurologists, with a wealthy clientele of Indians and foreigners, send patients to the network for a percentage. At least five US and Greek citizens were found in the guesthouse.
I had read in The X-Files Book of the Unexplained vol.2 that a Dr Siddaraju had been arrested in Bangalore, under suspicion of removing a kidney against the will of his patient. And was awaiting trial. The names and locations are different, but is there a link between the two cases? Can anyone confirm what the article said? It would be the first time, to my knowledge, that it is confirmed that people had their organs removed against their will. This article involves many features of the urban legend. Maybe too many, it seems too good to be true. |
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| uair01 Great Old One Joined: 12 Apr 2005 Total posts: 1108 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 30-04-2008 17:19 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Man held over church organ theft
Stolen church organ
The organ was taken from the church last week
A man has been arrested in connection with the theft of an organ from a church in Lanarkshire.
The instrument, valued at £60,000, was stolen from St Andrew's Episcopal Church in Uddingston last Tuesday.
Strathclyde Police said a 33-year-old man had been arrested and was detained in police custody in connection with the incident.
A report will be submitted to the procurator fiscal and the man is expected to appear in court on Tuesday.
The dark oak-coloured three-tier organ is approximately 5ft high and 5ft wide. |
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| stonedog2 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 30-04-2008 17:41 Post subject: |
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bad bad BAD!
Kath |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17933 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 10-11-2008 14:40 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | First Trial against an US Surgeon for Killing a Patient to Harvest Organs Begins
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/nov/08110607.html
By Jonquil Frankham
CALIFORNIA, November 6, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A San Francisco surgeon is undergoing trial for allegedly hastening the death of a terminally ill patient to harvest his vital organs.
The case against Hootan Roozrokh is believed to be the first of its kind brought against an American transplant surgeon.
Rosa Navarro, the patient’s mother, successfully filed suit against the hospital where the patient died and received $250,000 in compensation. Now the District Attorney’s office is pressing charges against the 34-year-old surgeon for “dependent adult abuse, administering a harmful substance and prescribing controlled substances without a legitimate medical purpose.”
Roozrokh is also being charged with giving the 25-year old Ruben Navarro an antiseptic called Betadine, normally administered to an organ donor after death, via feeding tube to the stomach. Some commentators suggest the antiseptic was ultimately responsible for the patient’s death.
Roozrokh attempted to induce what is known as “cardiac death,” a new criteria for determining “death,” by delivering abnormally high doses of painkillers in order to retrieve vital organs from Ruben Navarro. “Cardiac death” is distinct from “brain death,” an older criterion for determining death that requires a cessation of all brain function prior to harvesting vital organs.
Toronto physician and LifeSiteNews medical adviser Dr. John Shea, MD, FRCP (C), says that in order to determine if a patient meets the “cardiac death” criteria the patient’s respirator is removed while the heart is still beating.
“If the heart stopped beating within an hour, the surgeon waited two to five minutes before taking out the organs. If the heart had not stopped beating within an hour, the patient would be returned to a hospital bed to die without any further treatment,” writes Dr. Shea.
On January 29, 2006, Ruben Navarro stopped breathing on his own, and was put on a respirator. On February 3 he still had not recovered consciousness, though his mother claimed she saw “signs of recovery.”
Medical staff then removed Navarro to the operating room and withdrew his respirator, claiming that hospital policy required them to “pull the plug” after five days on life support without patient recovery. Navarro continued to live, however, and Dr. Roozrokh, is reported to have then told nurses, “Let's just give him some more candy.” The patient was given high doses of morphine and Ativan to hasten death.
Navarro’s heart continued to beat, and after one hour his organs were no longer considered useable. He was removed from the operating room and died several hours later.
Besides the ambiguity surrounding the actual moment of death, Dr. Shea writes that harvesting organs at either the point of brain death or cardiac death creates a conflict of interest on the part of the attending physician and fosters a “utilitarian” approach to life and death.
According to California state law, in order to avoid potential conflicts of interest, transplant surgeons cannot direct the care of potential donors while the patient is still in treatment. In this case, however, sources have reported to police that, contrary to that requirement, Dr. Roozrokh was directing the administration of drugs to Mr. Navarro while in the operating room.
Writing about the “utilitarian rationale” behind the invention of the “brain death” criterion, Shea says that “it was no longer the interest of the dying to avoid being declared ‘dead’ prematurely, but the community’s interest in declaring a dying person dead as soon as possible.” Shea’s criticisms would also apply to the “cardiac death” criterion.
The utilitarian approach to life and death that is increasingly pervading the organ donation industry is obvious from an article published this October by two Oxford scholars, which suggests that, rather than ensuring that brain death and cardiac death are indeed true death, “we could abandon the dead donor rule," as LifeSiteNews reported.
“We could for example, allow organs to be taken from people who are not brain dead, but who have suffered such severe injury that they would be permanently unconscious, like Terry Schiavo, who would be allowed to die anyway by removal of their medical treatment," wrote Julian Savulescu, the Uehiro Chair of Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, and neonatologist and Oxford graduate student Dominic Wilkinson
Bioethics International writes that the Roozrokh case “is likely to raise uneasiness among potential organ donors and could prompt doctors to shy away from a somewhat controversial practice of retrieving organs before a patient is brain dead.”
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Shock: Oxford Neonatologist Says Time Has Come to Consider “Mandatory Organ Donation”
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/oct/08102413.html
Organ Transplant Doctor Investigated in Non-Heart Beating Donation Case
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/mar/07030903.html
Mother Alleges Doctor Murdered Her Handicapped Son to Harvest His Organs
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jul/07070603.html |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17933 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 09-09-2009 17:50 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Israel organs claim row deepens
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8245306.stm
The Swedish article said Israeli soldiers had taken organs from dead prisoners
A Palestinian minister and an Israeli Arab member of parliament have stoked a row over allegations that Israel has taken organs from dead Palestinians.
Issa Qaraqae said Israel was hiding the bodies of dead Palestinian prisoners to disguise evidence of organ trafficking.
Israeli Arab MP Mohammed Barakeh said he would believe the organ-removal claims unless Israel disproved them.
Israel has angrily denied the allegations, first made in a Swedish newspaper, calling them "outrageous".
Mr Qaraqae said Israel was "hiding the bodies of Palestinian martyrs to remove the proof of their crimes, including organ trafficking".
He was speaking at a meeting in the West Bank city of Nablus to demand the return of the bodies of Palestinians killed by the Israeli army.
At the same meeting, Mr Barakeh, chairman of the Hadash party in the Israeli Knesset, said it was the right of Palestinians to ask "what Israel's reasons are for keeping the bodies of martyrs".
"Have the bodies been mutilated? My answer is yes, barring proof to the contrary. Have their organs been stolen? My answer is yes, barring proof to the contrary," he said.
'Outrageous' claim
Mr Barakeh later told Israel's Yediot Ahronot newspaper: "Seeing as there is no worse way to punish a man and his family than with his death, the question is why Israel continues to hold the bodies."
Mr Netanyahu said the claims were reminiscent of medieval 'blood libels'
"The burden of proof falls on Israel, and as long as it refuses to say what the status of the bodies is or return them, it is hiding something awful," he said.
The organ harvesting story was first published in August in Aftonbladet, Sweden's biggest-selling daily newspaper.
It claimed that in incidents dating back as far as 1992, Israeli soldiers snatched Palestinian youths and returned their dismembered bodies a few days later.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has urged the Swedish government to condemn the article, saying the accusations were "outrageous".
Mr Netanyahu compared the claims to medieval "blood libels", which alleged that Jews used the blood of Christian babies during religious ceremonies.
But Sweden's foreign minister Carl Bildt has said he would not condemn the article because freedom of expression is part of the Swedish constitution.
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17933 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 09-09-2009 18:04 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Prof Yehuda Hiss: The Missing Link In Palestinian Organ Theft?
By Jonathan Cook
http://www.countercurrents.org/cook040909.htm
The hyperventilating by Israel’s leaders over a story published in a Swedish newspaper last month suggesting that the Israeli army assisted in organ theft from Palestinians has distracted attention from the disturbing allegations made by Palestinian families that were the basis of the article’s central claim. |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17933 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 21-12-2009 13:02 Post subject: |
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The missing link is found!
| Quote: | Israel admits organ harvesting
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/1221/breaking7.html
Israel has admitted that in the 1990s, its forensic pathologists harvested organs from dead bodies, including Palestinians, without permission of their families.
The issue emerged with publication of an interview with the then-head of Israel's Abu Kabir forensic institute, Dr Jehuda Hiss.
The interview was conducted in 2000 by an American academic, who released it because of a huge controversy last summer over an allegation by a Swedish newspaper that Israel was killing Palestinians in order to harvest their organs. Israel hotly denied the charge.
Parts of the interview were broadcast on Israel's Channel 2 TV over the weekend. In it, Dr Hiss said, "We started to harvest corneas ... Whatever was done was highly informal. No permission was asked from the family."
The Channel 2 report said that in the 1990s, forensic specialists at Abu Kabir harvested skin, corneas, heart valves and bones from the bodies of Israeli soldiers, Israeli citizens, Palestinians and foreign workers, often without permission from relatives.
In a response to the TV report, the Israeli military confirmed that the practice took place. "This activity ended a decade ago and does not happen any longer," the military said in a statement quoted by Channel 2.
In the interview, Dr Hiss described how his doctors would mask the removal of corneas from bodies. "We'd glue the eyelid shut," he said. "We wouldn't take corneas from families we knew would open the eyelids."
Many of the details in the interview first came to light in 2004, when Dr Hiss was dismissed as head of the forensic institute because of irregularities over use of organs there. Israel's attorney general dropped criminal charges against him, and Dr Hiss still works as chief pathologist at the institute. He had no comment on the TV report.
Hiss became director of the institute in 1988. He said in the interview that the practice of harvesting organs without permission began in the "early 1990s." However, he also said that military surgeons removed a thin layer of skin from bodies as early as 1987 to treat burn victims. Dr Hiss said he believed that was done with family consent. The harvesting ended in 2000, he said.
Complaints against the institute, where autopsies of dead bodies are performed, at the time of Hiss' dismissal came from relatives of Israeli soldiers and civilians as well as Palestinians. The bodies belonged to people who died from various causes, including diseases, accidents and Israeli-Palestinian violence, but there has been no evidence to back up the claim in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet that Israeli soldiers killed Palestinians for their organs. Angry Israeli officials called the report "anti-Semitic."
Nancy Scheper-Hughes, a professor of anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley, said she decided to make the interview public in the wake of the Aftonbladet controversy, which raised diplomatic tensions between Israel and Sweden and prompted Sweden's foreign minister to call off a visit to the Jewish state.
Ms Scheper-Hughes said that while Palestinians were "by a long shot" not the only ones affected by the practice in the 1990s, she felt the interview must be made public now because "the symbolism, you know, of taking skin of the population considered to be the enemy, (is) something, just in terms of its symbolic weight, that has to be reconsidered."
While insisting that all organ harvesting was done with permission, Israel's Health Ministry told Channel 2, "The guidelines at that time were not clear." It added, "For the last 10 years, Abu Kabir has been working according to ethics and Jewish law."
AP |
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| Analis Great Old One Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Total posts: 851 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 18-12-2010 16:10 Post subject: |
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/14/kosovo-prime-minister-llike-mafia-boss
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Kosovo PM is head of human organ and arms ring, Council of Europe reports
This article was published on guardian.co.uk at 15.17 GMT on Tuesday 14 December 2010. A version appeared on p1 of the Main section section of the Guardian on Wednesday 15 December 2010. It was last modified at 13.35 GMT on Wednesday 15 December 2010.
Kosovo's prime minister is the head of a "mafia-like" Albanian group responsible for smuggling weapons, drugs and human organs through eastern Europe, according to a Council of Europe inquiry report on organised crime.
Hashim Thaçi is identified as the boss of a network that began operating criminal rackets in the runup to the 1998-99 Kosovo war, and has held powerful sway over the country's government since.
The report of the two-year inquiry, which cites FBI and other intelligence sources, has been obtained by the Guardian. It names Thaçi as having over the last decade exerted "violent control" over the heroin trade. Figures from Thaçi's inner circle are also accused of taking captives across the border into Albania after the war, where a number of Serbs are said to have been murdered for their kidneys, which were sold on the black market.
Legal proceedings began in a Pristina district court today into a case of alleged organ trafficking discovered by police in 2008. That case – in which organs are said to have been taken from impoverished victims at a clinic known as Medicus – is said by the report to be linked to Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) organ harvesting in 2000. It comes at a crucial period for Kosovo, which on Sunday held its first elections since declaring independence from Serbia in 2008. Thaçi claimed victory in the election and has been seeking to form a coalition with opposition parties.
Dick Marty, the human rights investigator behind the inquiry, will present his report to European diplomats from all 47 member states at a meeting in Paris on Thursday. His report suggests Thaçi's links with organised crime date back more than a decade, when those loyal to his Drenica group came to dominate the KLA, and seized control of "most of the illicit criminal enterprises" in which Kosovans were involved south of the border, in Albania.
During the Kosovo conflict Slobodan Miloševic's troops responded to attacks by the KLA by orchestrating a horrific campaign against ethnic Albanians in the territory. As many as 10,000 are estimated to have died at the hands of Serbian troops.
While deploring Serb atrocities, Marty said the international community chose to ignore suspected war crimes by the KLA, "placing a premium instead on achieving some degree of short-term stability". He concludes that during the Kosovo war and for almost a year after, Thaçi and four other members of the Drenica group named in the report carried out "assassinations, detentions, beatings and interrogations". This same hardline KLA faction has held considerable power in Kosovo's government over the last decade, with the support of western powers keen to ensure stability in the fledgling state.
The report paints a picture in which ex-KLA commanders have played a crucial role in the region's criminal activity. It says: "In confidential reports spanning more than a decade, agencies dedicated to combating drug smuggling in at least five countries have named Hashim Thaçi and other members of his Drenica group as having exerted violent control over the trade in heroin and other narcotics."
Marty says: "Thaçi and these other Drenica group members are consistently named as 'key players' in intelligence reports on Kosovo's mafia-like structures of organised crime. I have examined these diverse, voluminous reports with consternation and a sense of moral outrage."
His inquiry was commissioned after the former chief prosecutor for war crimes at the Hague, Carla Del Ponte, said she had been prevented from investigating senior KLA officials. Her most shocking claim, which she said required further investigation, was that the KLA smuggled captive Serbs across the border into Albania, where their organs were harvested.
The report, which states that it is not a criminal investigation and unable to pronounce judgments of guilt or innocence, gives some credence to Del Ponte's claims.
It finds the KLA did hold mostly Serb captives in a secret network of six detention facilities in northern Albania, and that Thaçi's Drenica group "bear the greatest responsibility" for prisons and the fate of those held in them.
They include a "handful" of prisoners said to have been transferred to a makeshift prison just north of Tirana, where they were killed for their kidneys.
The report states: "As and when the transplant surgeons were confirmed to be in position and ready to operate, the captives were brought out of the 'safe house' individually, summarily executed by a KLA gunman, and their corpses transported swiftly to the operating clinic.''
The same Kosovan and foreign individuals involved in the macabre killings are linked to the Medicus case, the report finds.
Marty is critical of the western powers which have provided a supervisory role in Kosovo's emergence as a state, for failing to hold senior figures, including Thaçi, to account. His report criticises "faltering political will on the part of the international community to effectively prosecute the former leaders of the KLA".
It concludes: "The signs of collusion between the criminal class and the highest political and institutional office holders are too numerous and too serious to be ignored.
"It is a fundamental right of Kosovo's citizens to know the truth, the whole truth, and also an indispensable condition for reconciliation between the communities and the country's prosperous future."
If as expected the report is formally adopted by the committee this week, the findings will go before the parliamentary assembly next year.
The Kosovo government tonight dismissed the allegations, claiming they were the produce of "despicable and bizarre actions by people with no moral credibility".
"Today, the Guardian published an article that referred to a report from a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Dick Marty, which follows up on past reports published over the last 12 years aiming at maligning the war record of the Kosovo Liberation Army and its leaders," it said in a statement.
"The allegations have been investigated several times by local and international judiciary, and in each case, it was concluded that such statements have were not based on facts and were construed to damage the image of Kosovo and the war of the Kosovo Liberation Army.
"It is clear that someone wants to place obstacles in the way of prime minister, Hashim Thaçi, after the general election, in which the people of Kosovo placed their clear and significant trust in him to deliver the development programme and governance of our country.
"Such despicable and bizarre actions by people with no moral credibility, serve the ends of only those specific circles that do not wish well to Kosovo and its people."
• This article was amended on 15 December 2010. The original dated the Kosovo conflict to 1999 alone. This has been clarified. |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17933 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 03-10-2013 13:14 Post subject: |
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I wonder how this one will turn out? UL or actual organ-legging, will we ever know?
Madagascar mob kills Europeans over 'organ trafficking'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-24380937
Two European men have been burnt to death in Madagascar by protesters who suspected they were trafficking human organs after a child went missing.
A local man had been arrested in connection with the disappearance on Wednesday on Nosy Be, a tourist island resort in Madagascar's north-west.
A crowd then rioted outside the police station believing him to have been paid to remove the child's organs.
The mob proceeded on "a manhunt" for the foreigners, police said.
"It resulted in the death of two foreigners," the deputy commander of the paramilitary police, Gen Guy Randriamaro Bobin, told the AFP news agency.
Officials initially said they were French nationals, but residents on Nosy Be say one of the men may have been Italian.
"Two foreigners died, we have confirmed that one of them was French," AFP quotes France's foreign affairs spokesman Philippe Lalliot as saying.
Gen Randriamaro Bobin said an eight-year-old boy's lifeless body was found on Thursday morning, without genitals and without a tongue, the agency reports.
Local media reported that the protesters had found human organs in a fridge in the building where the Europeans were staying.
The BBC's Tim Healy in the capital, Antananarivo, says Nosy Be is the jewel in the crown of Madagascar's tourist industry and has been used to encourage tourists to return to the Indian Ocean nation following several years of political unrest.
Text alerts
According to reports, at least one person was also killed in the violence that erupted outside the police station.
Police fired shots in the air to disperse the protesters, who had been hurling stones.
Fishermen carry fishing nets on a beach - Madagascar, 2006
Tourism has been affected by Madagascar's political crisis and most islanders live on less than $2 a day
The mob then burnt down houses around the station before going on to find the home of the two foreigners.
"They confessed under torture [by the mob] to organ trafficking," Gen Randriamaro Bobin told AFP.
Our correspondent says the incident may have political undertones as elections are scheduled to take place on 25 October and there are tensions nationwide.
Poor communities' fears of human organ trafficking have been exploited in the past by those wanting to stir up tensions or as a means of revenge for another issue, our reporter says.
Instances of mob justice are common in Madagascar, he adds.
The French embassy in Madagascar has sent out text alerts warning French nationals not to travel to Nosy Be and urging foreigners on the island resort to remain indoors and not go to the beach where it is reported the foreigners were burnt.
"The two Europeans were killed and burnt on Ambatoloaka beach," AFP quotes Honoya Tilahizandry, the commissioner of police in Andoany, Nosy Be's main town, as saying.
A regional government official on Nosy Be blamed for the paramilitary police's lax response to the case was reportedly kidnapped on Wednesday.
Edit to fix typo. |
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