Israeli Defence Force/Doctors stealing human organs?

[TonyGosling]

Israel-Sweden row over media report

Bildt, who is due to visit Israel, has said he is not going to apologise for the controversial article [EPA]

A diplomatic row between Sweden and Israel has intensified, with Israeli politicians urging Stockholm to condemn a newspaper article they have described as "blood libel".

In the report, published in Sweden's leading tabloid, a freelance journalist accused the Israeli army of stealing body organs from Palestinian men after killing them.

"The statements in the Swedish press were outrageous," Benyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, was quoted as telling his cabinet on Sunday.

"We are not expecting an apology from the Swedish government... We are expecting condemnation."

The Swedish government has refused to apologise for the article published in Sweden's Aftonbladet on Monday last week, saying the country's press freedom prevents it from intervening.

Bildt visit

"If I devoted myself to correcting all the strange claims in the media, I would probably not have time to devote to very much else," said Carl Bildt, the Swedish foreign minister.

The controversy comes two weeks before Bildt is to visit Israel, with Stockholm currently holding the rotating EU presidency.


The Aftonbladet report said Ghanaian's body had been returned with a long scar

In the article, Donald Bostrom, a Swedish freelance journalist, writes about the shortage of body parts in Israel and makes references to the so-called New Jersey scandal earlier this summer which involved rabbis, illegal organ trading and money laundering.

Bostrom then gives what he says is his own eyewitness account of an Israeli army raid on a Palestinian village in 1992.

He told Al Jazeera he was not anti-Semitic and insisted what he wrote was true.

"The body was taken away and the authorities made an autopsy with this young man against the will of the family," Bostrom said.

"All those things are actually true and happened. When the military returned the body the family said, 'We think they stole the organ of the body' because there was an empty belly.

Medieval libels

"What I do is to refer to three things which have actually happened: the boy was shot dead, the autopsy, and the family claiming the body was emptied of organs."

The article has sparked outrage in Israel, with scores of ministers and commentators calling it anti-Semitic and reminiscent of mediaeval libels that Jews killed Christian children for their blood.

"If I devoted myself to correcting all the strange claims in the media, I would probably not have time to devote to very much else"

Carl Bildt, Swedish foreign minister


Yuval Steinitz, the Israeli finance minister, said: "In the Middle Ages, slander was spread accusing Jews of preparing Passover matza [unleavened bread] with the blood of Christian children.

"And today it is IDF [Israeli Defence Force] soldiers who are accused of killing Palestinians to take their organs."

Steinitz said on Sunday that the crisis would continue "as long as the Swedish government doesn't change its attitude towards this anti-Semitic article.

"Those who do not condemn it are not welcome in Israel."

Gideon Levy, a political analyst for Israel's Haaretz newspaper, described the dispute as "out of proportion" and an attempt by Israel to undermine Sweden's criticism of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Journalists barred

"I think this is a very good example of very bad journalism and very bad diplomacy," he told Al Jazeera on Monday.

"The story was published without any kind of factual grounds and it was very easy to deny it and very hard to prove it."

Daniel Seaman, the head of the Israeli government press office, said on Sunday he would not give accreditation to two of the newspaper's reporters planning to visit the Gaza Strip.

A spokesman for Israel's interior ministry said it was freezing the issue of entry visas to Swedish journalists, though those already working in the country would not be
affected for now.

The newspaper commented on its story on Sunday, acknowledging that it had no proof of any organ theft but argued that the story deserved publication because of the issues it raised.

[TonyGosling]

see also: May 11, 2004 Jerusalem Post - Hiss fired for repeated body-part scandals

Israel claims Swedish press committing "blood libel" over organ theft allegations By Alexandra Sandels - Menassat - Tuesday, Aug 25, 2009

and: 10,000 urge boycott of Ikea, Volvo - Jerusalem Post


The Great Israeli Body Parts Scandal
Beyond the Fringe
Tuesday, Aug 25, 2009

The luminary journalist I.F. Stone observed that “Israel is creating a kind of moral schizophrenia in world Jewry. In the outside world, the welfare of Jews depends on the maintenance of secular non-racial pluralistic societies. In Israel, Jewry finds itself defending a society whose ideal is racial and exclusionist. Jews must fight everywhere for their security – against principles and practices they find themselves defending in Israel.”

While the Swedish government expresses its commitment to constitutional rights of free speech in the press, Nutanyahoo and Lieberman are running true to form screaming blue murder and blood libel, demanding condemnation of Donald Boström’s op ed organ theft piece in Sweden’s biggest daily, Aftonbladet. Some incensed Israelis are demanding a boycott of Ikea though it has no ties with either media or government.

Donald Boström’s article juxtaposes the US Rabbi Rosenbaum organ trafficking revelations with unanswered questions back in the Ziocolony.

In 1992, out of 133 Palestinians who had been killed, 52 had had autopsies performed, according to Boström. The bodies had been autopsied at Israel’s Abu Kabir Forensic Institute, and were later returned to their families.

Dr. Yehuda Hiss worked.at the Abu Kabir Institute at least since 1989. In a 2005 court arrangement, he received only a reprimand for his involvement in the unauthorized removal of parts from 125 bodies.

According to In exchange, Hiss will admit to the acts. The plea bargain is subject to the approval of the court.

In all of the 125 cases, Dr. Hiss and his subordinates removed organs, bones and tissue without the permission of, and in many cases, against the expressed wishes of the families of the deceased........

http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_56742.shtml

[Frazzel]

From www.publicanthropology.org

"Dr. Zaki Shapira, head of kidney transplant services at Bellinson Medical Center, near Tel Aviv ( and, ironically, former member of the Bellagio Task Force on global transplant ethics) has been operating as a transplant outlaw since the early 1990s when he first used local Arab brokers to locate willing kidney sellers among Palestinian workers in the Gaza and the West Bank. When Shapira’s hand was slapped by an ethics review board (the Cotev Commission) in the mid 1990s, Shapira simply moved his illicit practice overseas - to Turkey and to countries in Eastern Europe where the considerable economic chaos of the past decade has created parallel markets in bodies for sex and for kidneys.

But affluent Palestinians from the West Bank also travel in search of transplants with purchased kidneys to Baghdad, Iraq, where several medical centers cater to transplant tourists from elsewhere in the Arab world. The kidney sellers in Iraq, I was told by one Palestinian kidney transplant patient in March 2001, are mostly young men, foreign workers from Jordan, and poor Iraqis who are housed in a special wing of each hospital in dorms that could be called "kidney motels", while they wait for the blood and cross-matching tests that will turn them into the day’s "winner" of the kidney lottery. In Iraq the transplant package, complete with pre- and post-operative care and with fully equipped modern apartments provided in the hospital complex for accompanying relatives, is only $20,000, up, we were told, from only $10,000 several years ago. In fact, it was the appearance of these successful transplanted Palestinians in the after care clinic of Hadassah hospital that prompted Jewish patients to pursue alternative transplant options for themselves.

In Israel I interviewed more than 50 transplants professionals, transplant patients, and organs buyers and sellers involved in commercialized transplants. Most surgeons, while worried about the risk to their patients and the potential for exploitation of both organs sellers and buyers on the part of unscrupulous doctors and their commercial brokers and intermediaries, none were willing to condemn a practice which they saw as "saving lives".

The passivity of the Ministry of Health in Israel in refusing to intervene and crack down on this multi-million dollar business which is making Israel something of a pariah in the international transplant world, requires some explanation. As does the passivity of the governments of the Philippines, Iraq, Turkey, Romania, Moldava, and Georgia where specialized "kidney belts" are spring up.

We in the United States cannot claim any high moral ground given the number of U.S. transplant centers, public and private, that court and cater to paying foreigners, thereby subverting the idea of donated organs as a national and community resource. Dr. Michael Friedlander, chief nephrologist at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, counts among his recovering international transplant patients, several Israelis who have recently returned this year and last (2000-2001) from Europe and the United States with kidneys that were purchased from living donors.

In March 2001 I interviewed in Israel two men, one a young student, the other a retired Israeli civil servant, who had both recently returned from transplant units in Baltimore and NYC, U.S., each with a new, purchased kidney. Itay, a graduate student in business in Jerusalem said that he preferred not to think about his living donor, and was even advised by his local transplant doctor, who accompanied him to New York, to think of his trip to the United States as an extended vacation holiday . Similarly, the older transplant patient described the fees he had paid, through a broker, to an acquaintance for her spare kidney as a "bonus" and her trip with him to the U.S. (under false pretenses, traveling as tourists) as nothing more than a paid vacation.

The Fetishized Kidney

What drives these new markets in living donors is the desire to control the quality of the product purchased . In Israel;, for example, there is resistance to taking the organ from a dead person when a strong, healthy, living donor can be found.

A retired lawyer in Jerusalem, explained to me last March (2001) why he went through considerable expense and considerable risk to travel to Eastern Europe to purchase a kidney from a displaced rural worker, rather than wait in line for a cadaver organ in Israel:

Why should I have to wait years for a kidney from someone who was in a car accident, after all that trauma, have that same organ put inside me? That organ is not going to be any good! Or, even worse, I could get the organ of an elderly person, or an alcoholic, or a person who died of a stroke. That kidney is all used up! It’s far better to get a kidney from a healthy man who can also benefit from the money I can afford to pay. Where I went the people were so poor they did not even have bread to eat. Do you have any idea of what one thousand, let alone five thousand dollars, means to a peasant? The money I paid was a gift equal to the gift that I received."

[TonyGosling]

No one told me, not even Palestinian families, that the Israel army took organs from their sons. The army just returned sewed up bodies after autopsy and that raises questions, says Swedish journalist Donald Bostrom. His opponent Dr. Mordachai Kedar, who spent 25 years serving in Israeli military intelligence and is now a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University, says that Donald Bostrom has fallen into a deep trap set for him by Palestinians, because he never checked whether the story is true.


Link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eipil73cA2k

also:
part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZxyD931dEQ
part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZdI0JQlHaQ

[outsider]

Now in ICH:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23434.htm

[TonyGosling]

Palestinian family claims to be victim of organ trade by Israel - 28 August, 2009
After Swedish journalist Donald Bostrom published an article claiming Israel has been harvesting the organs of Palestinians, one Palestinian family has been making headlines with claims that their child was a victim.
http://www.russiatoday.com/Best_Videos/2009-08-28/organ-trade-israel-f amily.html

[outsider]

Just to help balance the thread, and to let posters know of one of the many good Jewish groups; here is IJAN's latest Anniversary Bulletin:

Anniversary Bulletin:

IJAN's First Year
Support the Gaza Freedom March
Demand Dayton to exit Palestine
Challenge Islamophobia in the U.S. judicial system
Tell IGLTA that Apartheid Israel is not for LGBT Leisure Tourism!


IJAN is a growing international network of Jews whose Jewish identities are not based on Zionism but on a plurality of histories and experiences. We share a commitment to participation in the legacy of struggles against colonization and imperialism. As such, we struggle against Zionism and its manifestation in the State of Israel’s historic and ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and the confiscation of their land.

www.ijsn.net


Anniversary Bulletin


This bulletin comes out on the eve of IJAN’s first anniversary. Please join us in welcoming in the new year with action that reflects our commitment to Palestinian liberation. In the bulletin below, are some words of reflection about the current state of affairs in which our work occurs. You will also find four suggestions for simple actions you can take this week to move the work forward in the coming year. Please participate in these efforts to: support an international campaign to end the siege on Gaza, remove US General Dayton from the West Bank, provide solidarity for a US citizen facing 60 years in prison for false charges by an Islamophobic state, and support activists in Israel attempting to keep Israel from being promoted as a travel destination. We look forward to another year of working together toward the liberation of Palestine and justice for all.





IJAN’s First Year


As we approach the first anniversary of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN), we remember the anniversary of Sabra and Shatila and over 61 years of Palestinian struggle against ethnic cleansing. We are reminded that the latest siege and blockade of Gaza is part of this ongoing colonization of Palestine. Through our actions over this anniversary we intend to honor the second intifada, which reignited the international solidarity movement from which our network emerged…

Much has changed since the release of the founding Charter of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network on 29 September 2008. The Palestinian call for boycott of, divestment from, and sanctions against Israel (BDS) is gaining in presence and impact, both internationally and inside Israel. Israel’s barbaric assault on Gaza has inspired humanitarian efforts to break the siege, calls for prosecuting Israeli war criminals, and the breaking of diplomatic ties by Venezuela, Bolivia, and Mauritania.

Against the backdrop of this increased oppression, we are witnessing efforts to resume a negotiated ‘peace’ brokered by the United States. The alleged ‘peace plan’ picks up where the Oslo Accords left off. That project was successfully interrupted by second intifada, and it must not be permitted to reemerge in the form of a series of separate and caged Palestinian bantustans on 22 percent of historic Palestine….

The work ahead is to hold our own governments accountable for their support and funding of Israeli apartheid and colonization, and to mobilize public opinion to achieve this goal. To this end, the increasingly successful BDS campaign is our most powerful tool. In our second year, IJAN hopes to continue its work with those committed to the liberation of the Palestinian people as part of the broader struggle against racism, colonialism, and imperialism worldwide.

Click here to read the full statement, including IJAN’s accomplishments in our first year and our plans for the following year.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .



Support the Gaza Freedom March

>> Cliquez sur ici pour lire notre rapport de support en FRANÇAIS.

The framework of the Gaza Freedom March to take place in January, 2010, was initially challenged by highly-respected Palestinian activists. Their criticisms led to a compromise that satisfied both the Palestinian critics and most of the initial organizers. This compromise was reflected in a "Statement of Context" that is now part of the call and locates the struggle to lift the siege on Gaza within the broader context of the 60 plus year history of colonization of Palestine and Palestinian resistance. Since then, there has been an outpouring of support for the March from Palestinian civil society. IJAN endorses the March and is partnering to make it a success. IJAN France is organizing a delegation.

Click here to read IJAN’s full statement of support on Electronic Intifada.

Click here to endorse or join the March.

If you are interested in organizing a delegation, please contact the organizers of the March at info@gazafreedommarch.org, and CC ijan@ijsn.net so that we can coordinate together.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Call for US IJAN Action:
Demand Dayton to Exit Palestine

IJAN endorsed the call of the US Palestinian Community Network (USPCN) to decry the U.S. and Israel exploitation of internal Palestinian divisions through the supplying, training, and supervising of Palestinian Authority security forces to quell Palestinian resistance in the West Bank. As the USPCN notes, liberation struggles throughout the world have been subject to these same imperialist tactics. And, like solidarity activists before us, our responsibility lies in attempting stop history from repeating itself.

Please join the US Palestinian Community Network in calling for a withdrawal of Dayton and an end to US-funded death squads in the West Bank.

Click here to read and sign the statement.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Call for US IJAN Action:
Challenge Islamophobia in the U.S. Judicial System

Help IJAN reach its goal of sending 250 letters to the sentencing Judge!


The US War on Terror uses Islamophobia to justify the targeting of Muslim, Arab, and South and West Asian individuals, communities and organizations. Many of those serving time have been targeted simply for their participation in organizations or religious institutions that are deemed a terrorist threat without any clear evidence of actual participation in anything remotely connected to harming civilian populations. This is the case with Ehsanul Sadequee (Shifa).

On April 17, 2006, 19 year old Ehsanul Sadequee (Shifa), an American born Muslim, was kidnapped from Bangladesh under the direction of the Bush administration and handed over to the US on alleged charges of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism and is currently awaiting trial. Shifa has served over three years in solidarity confinement without trial or having been convicted on an offense. He has been subjected to physical abuse, psychological torture, and health ailments have been ignored and exacerbated by federal prison staff. More information can be found at http://www.freeshifa.com/.

PLEASE TAKE 10 MINUTES TO SEND A LETTER TO REQUEST A REDUCTION OF THE SENTENCE SHIFA IS FACING—UP TO 60 YEARS IN PRISON FOR INVALID CHARGES OF TERRORISM.


Click here for a sample letter.

Tell IGLTA that Apartheid Israel is not for LGBT Leisure Tourism!

On October 10-16, 2009, the International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association (IGLTA) is planning to hold a tourism conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, aimed at boosting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) leisure tourism to Israel. The audience of this conference is expected to be made up mostly of travel agents who specialize in promoting LGBT tourism. With this conference IGLTA, in cooperation with an Israeli LGBT organization, the Aguda, will give its symbolic and financial support to a state that continually occupies, oppresses and dispossess millions of Palestinians and murders and imprisons many thousands of them. Queer activists and groups in Canada, Israel and the United States are calling on LGBTQI people and friends around the world to demand that IGLTA cancel its planned conference in Israel and cease any promotion of tourism to this country.

Please email International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association, calling on it to cancel its planned conference in Israel and any promotion of tourism to this country.

Click here to read the full statement, and see a sample letter with a full list of addressees.

International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network

Canada :: Europe :: India :: Israel :: Latin America :: Morocco :: United Kingdom :: United States

ijan@ijsn.net :: www.ijsn.net
© International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network

[Mark Gobell]

Kosovo PM is head of human organ and arms ring, Council of Europe reports

Two-year inquiry accuses Albanian 'mafia-like' crime network of killing Serb prisoners for their kidneys

* Paul Lewis in Pristina
* guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 14 December 2010 15.17 GMT

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 1999 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."


The Guardian

[Mark Gobell]

Butchers: The hidden truth about Israel's kidney theft ring

Featuring the delectable talents of Rabbi LEVY IZHAK ROSENBAUM, aka "The Organist" aka Izzy (Issac) Rosenbaum.

[Disco_Destroyer]

Kosovo PM Thaci: Mafia boss behind drugs, organ trafficking?


Link


There's a storm brewing over Kosovo, after a draft report from the Council of Europe linked Prime Minister Hashim Tatchi with serious human rights abuses, including organ and drugs trafficking. The paper also claims the international community has ignored suspected war crimes in the region for years. The full document will be presented on Thursday.

[Mark Gobell]

[Mark Gobell]

Kosovo organ donor ring: the Israeli connection

Most international trafficking rings have involved wealthy Israeli patients on 'transplant tours'

* Paul Lewis
* guardian.co.uk, Friday 17 December 2010 19.50 GMT
* Article history

Human organ donations The Israeli market for donor livers has been well-documented. Photograph: Ben Edwards/Getty

It is fitting that the man described as the "fixer" in Kosovo's alleged organ ring was an Israeli of Turkish descent. Moshe Harel, a fugitive wanted by Interpol in connection with the case, is accused of matching potential donors recruited in Turkey with recipients, many if not all of whom had connections with Israel.

The Israeli market for donor livers has been well-documented, and most international trafficking rings have involved wealthy Israeli patients on so-called "transplant tours". Organ donation in Israel is low due to concerns in the Orthodox community about the body after death.

Until recently, experts said, Israeli citizens were able to claim partial subsidies from health providers when receiving transplants abroad. The loophole is said to have been recently closed after international pressure.

Only 10% of Israeli adults hold donor cards, compared with more than 30% in most western countries. Israel has launched a scheme in an attempt to increase donor rates, meaning card carriers have the right to priority treatment should they require a transplant.

Last month the recipients of organs illegally transplanted in a private hospital in South Africa were described as Israelis. The donors – said to have included children – were Brazilians and Romanians paid $6,000 (£3,869) for a kidney. Netcare of South Africa, which also runs hospitals in Britain, admitted in court to receiving R3.8m (£342,000) from an illegal organ trafficking syndicate. Paul Lewis

[Mark Gobell]

Interpol hunts two Israelis for Kosovo organ trafficking

Moshe Harel among seven indicted for membership of a criminal group trafficking people into Kosovo to remove human organs for transplant; another Israeli citizen, Zaki Shapira, identified as co-conspirator.

At least seven people, including an Israeli citizen, are suspected of involvement in an international network that falsely promised poor people payment for their kidneys and then sold the organs for as much as 100,000 euros ($137,000), according to an indictment obtained by The Associated Press.

Organs- AP- Nov. 12, 2010

The indictment is the starkest revelation of the extent of organized crime in the country since Kosovo declared independence in 2008.

Five Kosovo nationals, including Ilir Rrecaj, a former senior health ministry official, have been charged with five counts, ranging from trafficking in persons to unlawful exercise of medical activity and abuse of power. None of the suspects are in custody

Moshe Harel, an Israeli citizen, and Turkish doctor Yusuf Sonmez - are listed as wanted by Interpol. Sonmez is the subject of several criminal proceedings in other countries, including Turkey, for human trafficking and removal of organs, according to the indictment.

Both Sonmez and Harel are fugitive from justice, the indictment said.

Two other doctors, Israeli national Zaki Shapira and Turkish national Kenan Demirkol are identified in the 46-page document as unindicted co-conspirators.

The organized criminal group trafficked people into Kosovo for the purpose of removing human organs for transplant, EU prosecutor Jonathan Ratel said in the indictment. "Some 20 foreign nationals were recruited with false promises of payments in 2008," he wrote.

Victims were promised up to $20,000 (14,500 euros), while recipients were required to pay between 80,000 and 100,000 euros ($110,000-$137,000).

According to the indictment obtained by the AP on Thursday, the victims came from Moldova, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkey and lived in extreme poverty or acute financial distress.

The EU prosecution has made requests to secure evidence from authorities in Canada, Germany, Kazakhstan and Turkey, including access to e-mails of two suspects on servers in the United States.

The prosecution alleges that one of the five, Kosovo surgeon Lutfi Dervishi was the ringleader of the criminal group. It said Dervishi attended a medical conference in Istanbul in 2006 and asked for someone who could perform organ transplants. He was contacted by Sonmez six months later.

Dervishi and Sonmez then carried out the operations in the private medical clinic Medicus, managed by Dervishi's son, Arban Dervishi, who is also indicted. Harel was involved in identifying, recruiting and transporting victims and ensuring the delivery of cash payments by electronic bank transfer prior to surgery, the indictment said. Two other doctors, Sokol Hajdini and Driton Jilta are also indicted.

Kosovo law forbids the removal and transplant of organs.

In 2008 investigators closed down the private health clinic where the doctors worked as part of the initial investigation. Kosovo police launched a raid triggered by suspicions that a Turkish man had sold his kidney to an Israeli recipient after he appeared fatigued at Pristina airport trying to board a flight to Turkey.

The man, identified in the indictment as Yilman Altun, told Kosovo police at the airport he came to the Balkan country to donate his kidney on invitation from the private clinics. A doctor found Altun was not in good medical condition, and sent him to the Pristina hospital for treatment.

When police searched the clinic in November 2008 they found an Israeli citizen in postoperative care, according to the indictment. Police seized medical records and supplies.

Rrecaj was fired from his governmental post after the raids and the suspects were arrested on Nov. 4, 2008. They denied all accusations and were released after 30 days in detention.

Soon after the raid, the Belgrade-based daily newspaper Blic alleged that Dervishi was linked to allegations that members of the Kosovo Liberation Army kidnapped Serb civilians and killed them for their organs, which they later sold.

The allegations of the trade stemmed from a book by former U.N. War Crimes tribunal prosecutor Carla Del Ponte who claimed that organ harvesting took place in Albania's remote north. Subsequent investigations did not substantiate the claims.

The indictment has been filed in a local court, according to EU officials who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the case. The officials said the prosecution can still add he names of other suspects to the indictment and details of their alleged crimes. A preliminary hearing is expected to be held by the end of the month, officials said.

The EU has 2,000 justice workers in Kosovo, including police, judges and prosecutors.

Haaretz

[Mark Gobell]

South African hospital firm admits 'cash for kidney' transplants

• Netcare KwaZulu pleads guilty to organ trafficking
• Children were among poor paid to have a kidney removed

* David Smith in Johannesburg
* guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 10 November 2010 20.15 GMT
* Article history

SOUTH AFRICA HUMAN ORGAN TRAFFICKING The wound left after an unidentified Brazilian man had an operation to remove his kidney in Durban in 2003. Photograph: EPA/STR

South Africa's biggest private hospital group has admitted receiving R3.8m (£342,000) from an illegal organ trafficking syndicate in a scam that included the removal of kidneys from five children.

Netcare, which also runs hospitals in Britain, took part in an international scam that allegedly saw poor Brazilians and Romanians paid $6,000 (£3,840) for their kidneys to be transplanted to wealthy Israelis.

At the Durban regional court yesterday, Netcare KwaZulu (NKZ) pleaded guilty on 102 counts relating to illegal operations between June 2001 and November 2003. It was fined R7,820,000 (£704,000).

Police said these included five counts of "unlawfully acquiring and transplanting human kidneys by acquiring kidneys from five minors in law at the time the kidneys were transplanted". Netcare admitted that some of the kidney donors were "minors" but there were no details of the children's ages or nationalities.

The group made a plea bargain in which criminal charges against the parent company, Netcare, and its chief executive, Richard Friedland, were unconditionally withdrawn.

The transplants took place at one of South Africa's top hospitals, Netcare St Augustine's in Durban. In September the Times of South Africa cited a charge sheet that read: "Israeli citizens in need of kidney transplants would be brought to South Africa for transplants at St Augustine's hospital. They paid kidney suppliers for these operations."

Kidneys "were initially sourced from Israeli citizens, but later Romanian and Brazilian citizens were recruited as their kidneys were obtainable at much lower cost than those of the Israeli suppliers."

The charge sheet said documents related to surgeries were forged to make it appear that the recipient and the donor were family members, a requirement of South African law. Israeli kidney suppliers were paid $20,000 while Brazilians and Romanians were paid $6,000, it said.

Colonel Vishnu Naidoo, a spokesman for the South African police service, was today unable to confirm these details, but said he was aware of "at least one Israeli" recipient and a number of donors from South America. Naidoo added: "It has emerged that the conviction of a hospital in respect of human tissue cases such as this one may be the first conviction in the world. Law enforcement agencies around the world have already started to take these matters seriously."

In court yesterday, NKZ was fined R20,000 for contravening the Human Tissues Act by allowing minors to donate kidneys. It received a further R4m fine for receiving money and participating in an illegal kidney transplant scheme. It will also have to pay R3.8m – "the benefit derived by NKZ from the illegal operations" – to South Africa's asset forfeiture unit.

Summonses were served on four surgeons, a doctor, two employees of Netcare and one translator to appear in the Durban regional court on 23 November.

Netcare, which for the past seven years has strongly denied any wrongdoing, issued a statement in which it admitted "criminal activities".

Jerry Vilakazi, chairman of Netcare's board of directors, said: "It became evident to Netcare and its legal counsel that certain employees of NKZ must have been aware that some kidney donors were not related to kidney recipients, that payments must have been made to the donors for their kidneys and that certain of the kidney donors were minors at the time that their kidneys were removed."

A Netcare statement said: "Dr Friedland commented that none of the employees who had participated in the criminal activities were still in the employ of Netcare or NKZ. Dr Friedland pointed out that the employees concerned had not only contravened the law but they had also disregarded Netcare's own internal policies, which expressly stipulated that ministerial permission in cases of transplants between non-related persons was to be obtained and that donations could only be done for altruistic purposes."

It added: "The last of the illegal operations was performed at the end of 2003. Since then Netcare and its subsidiaries have devoted considerable time and attention to ensuring that the law, the guidelines issued by the Department of Health and Netcare's own internal guidelines are meticulously adhered to and enforced in order to ensure that the conduct of deviant employees does not again cause harm to Netcare and its stakeholders."

[Mark Gobell]

Netcare operates in the UK as General Healthcare Group, who in turn own BMI Healthcare.

[Mark Gobell]

Not organ theft, but conditional donation.

[TonyGosling]

Israeli MDs Harvesting Organs for International Trafficking Ring
Costa Rica says ring allegedly sold kidneys to patients in Israel, East Europe; Health Ministry: No knowledge of reported cases.
Shlomo Papirblat and Dan Even Jun 20, 2013 5:00 AM

Health Ministry pushing for major changes to organ donation and surrogacy laws
A globe-spanning illegal industry New details emerge on organ trafficking ring between Israel and Costa Rica
Israel agrees to open Muslim prayer rooms in six largest hospitals
Deputy finance minister: State could make NIS 50 billion by cracking down on black market
Israeli suspected of luring women into organ traffic ring
Costa Rican authorities announced on Wednesday that they had broken up an international organ trafficking ring that worked with Israeli doctors and specialized in selling kidneys to patients in Israel and East Europe.
Costa Rica’s Attorney General’s Office said Israeli doctors had performed kidney-removal operations on some Costa Rican “donors” who sold their organs. Authorities also said the key suspect arrested in Costa Rica, a physician, had been in touch with Israeli doctors to match up Costa Rican kidney donors with Israeli recipients.
Performing such operations is a grave felony.
Costa Rican police together with Interpol are now investigating the case of a young woman who had been sent to Israel to donate a kidney, felt bad on the flight back, was taken off it at an interim stop and died.
Costa Rican authorities did not name any of the Israeli doctors alleged to be involved in the ring. Israel’s Health Ministry said it knew nothing about the affair.
In recent years Costa Rica has served as a destination for Israeli patients needing kidney transplants. The price for a kidney transplant on the black market is estimated at some NIS 700,000 per kidney.
San Jose police on Wednesday arrested Dr. Francisco Mora Palma, head of nephrology at the large Calderon Guardia Hospital, and raided a number of medical laboratories and clinics suspected of carrying out tests for the network’s doctors.
Attorney General Jorge Chavarria said the two people arrested − Mora Palma and an employee at Costa Rica’s Public Security Ministry − were the “tip of the iceberg” of the organ trafficking network.
Mora Palma was in touch with Israeli doctors and tested the suitability of the local residents whose organs were to be harvested in Israel, the Attorney General’s Office said.
Chavarria said the network’s doctors sent some of the “donors” to Israel to undergo the operation to have a kidney removed, while others had it removed in Costa Rica.
Sources involved in the investigation said they know of cases in which Israeli patients had been flown to Costa Rica to undergo surgery, without reporting to the health authorities.
Israel’s Health Ministry said in response to the report from Costa Rica that “the cases mentioned are not familiar and the Health Ministry does not know of them.”
It added: “Since 2008, when the New Organ Transplant Law was enacted, the health maintenance organizations and insurance companies stopped funding organ transplants ‏(which could be suspected of organ trafficking‏) for Israelis abroad. If Israelis did have transplants, as reported by the Costa Rica media, then they were funded privately, illegally and without the ministry’s agreement.”
About a year ago an Israeli organ-trafficking network was exposed in Israel. Its members used to fly Israeli patients for transplants in Kosovo and Sri Lanka. Other states suspected of having organ trafficking networks are Ecuador and Kazakhstan.
Chavarria also said Mora Palma and his associates used the hospital’s data bank to find suitable kidney harvesting candidates. These were usually needy men and women, who received $16,000-$20,000 for a kidney.
“We see these people as victims of an international crime ring,” the prosecutor said.
Israeli permits needed
If organ transplants arranged by the Costa Rican network were performed in Israel, as alleged, then the “donors” from Costa Rica appear to have obtained a permit for the harvest in Israeli hospitals, along with the approval of the Health Ministry committee that authorizes
organ donations from the living.
The committee authorizes donations from living donors who are not related, and is in charge of ascertaining that the donor was acting for humanitarian motives and did not receive payment for his organ.
However, in September 2005 the committee allowed an organ donation that had been presented as humanitarian, but after the death of the donor, a 38-year-old man from Ganei Tikva, it transpired that he had sold his kidney.
Until the New Organ Transplant Law was enacted, the HMOs sued to provide funding for Israelis’ organ transplants abroad, both as part of the complementary insurance and as part of state health insurance. This included states in which patients were required to pay the organ donors, like China and the Philippines.
However, since the law was passed, the number of Israeli transplants funded by HMOs abroad has been significantly reduced. Today they are performed only in states who allow organ donations from cadavers, and only if the hospital performing the operation signs a form ascertaining it does not deal with organ trafficking.
Thus, HMOs have approved funding for kidney transplants abroad only from cadavers in the United States, Russia and Latvia.
In 2007, 143 Israelis received kidney transplants abroad, but according to Health Ministry statistics, that number dropped to 35 in 2011. While transplants abroad have decreased, the new Organ Transplant Law has also led to a 50 percent increase in kidney transplants from live donors in Israel. Until two years ago Colombia performed 35 to 40 liver and heart transplants a year on Israeli patients in Medellin. But in the past year only four Israelis had transplants there, due to the restrictions imposed by Israel’s National Transplant and Organ Donation Center.
A senior official in the Clalit HMO recently asked Health Ministry director General Ronni Gamzu to arrive at a memorandum of understanding between Israel and Colombia to promote organ transplants there. The request was made ahead of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos’ visit to Israel last week.
At the same time a group of patients awaiting transplants in Colombia have asked Health Minister Yael German to advance this initiative.
The Health Ministry has not decided on the issue yet.  
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.530848

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

Kosovo justices request extradition of Israeli organ trafficker: Moshe Harel suspected of organising dozens of illegal kidney transplants at a clinic in Pristina #AsNotSeenOnTheBBC https://www.yahoo.com/news/kosovo-requests-extradition-israeli-organ-t rafficker-173659371.html


Kosovo requests extradition of Israeli 'organ trafficker'
https://www.yahoo.com/news/kosovo-requests-extradition-israeli-organ-t rafficker-173659371.html

AFP AFPJanuary 13, 2018
Israeli Moshe Harel is suspected of organising dozens of illegal kidney transplants at a clinic in Pristina
Israeli Moshe Harel is suspected of organising dozens of illegal kidney transplants at a clinic in Pristina (AFP Photo/PIERRE-PHILIPPE MARCOU)

Pristina (AFP) - Kosovo has asked Cyprus to extradite an Israeli man suspected of being the brains behind an international organ trafficking gang.
The suspect, named as Moshe Harel by local press, is accused of organising more than 30 illegal kidney removals and transplants at a clinic near Kosovo's capital Pristina, the prosecutor's office said.

"I will do my utmost so that this person, who, in addition to criminal offences has harmed the international image of Kosovo, is brought to justice for these acts," said Justice Minister Abelard Tahiri on Facebook.
Police announced his arrest in Cyprus last week.
Harel has been hunted by the authorities for almost a decade for exploiting victims, often recruited from poor areas in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, by promising 15,000 euros ($18,000) for their organs.
Recipients, mainly Israelis, would pay up to 100,000 euros for the transplant.
The organ trafficking network came to light in 2008 after a Turkish man collapsed at Pristina airport after having a kidney removed.
Police raided the Medicus clinic, which shut following the scandal.
In 2013, an EU-led court in Kosovo sentenced five Kosovan doctors to up to eight years in prison for organ trafficking in the country.
Donors, whose organs were illegally removed, were left without proper medical care and treated "like waste," prosecutors said at the time of the trial.
But the Supreme Court of Kosovo annulled the verdict in 2016 and ordered a new trial, which is ongoing.
The indictment named Harel as the trafficking network's mastermind, while Turkish doctor Yusuf Ercin Sonmez -- labelled by Kosovo media as the "Turkish Frankenstein" and still on the run -- was suspected of performing the transplants at the clinic.
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