Girl smuggled into Britain to have her 'organs harvested'

[Bill Peckham]

10/19/13
Girl smuggled into Britain to have her 'organs harvested'
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/10390183/Girl-smuggled-into-Britain-to-have-her-organs-harvested.html
By Steven Swinford, Senior Political Correspondent


The unnamed girl was brought to the UK from Somalia with the intention of removing her organs and selling them on to those desperate for a transplant. Child protection charities warned that the case was unlikely to be an isolated incident as traffickers were likely to have smuggled a group of children into the country.

The case emerged in a government report which showed that the number of human trafficking victims in the UK has risen by more than 50 per cent last year and reached record levels.

A total of 371 children were exploited, with the majority of them being used as slaves or sexually abused. They included 95 children from Vietnam, 67 from Nigeria and 25 from China. Others hailed from Romania and Bangladesh.

The figures also detail how 20 British girls have been victims of human trafficking. It comes after a series of court cases in which British girls were raped and exploited by gangs of Asian men. Child protection charities warned last night that criminal gangs were attempting to exploit the demand for organ transplants in Britain.

Bharti Patel, the chief executive of Ecpat UK, the child protection charity, said: "Traffickers are exploiting the demand for organs and the vulnerability of children. It's unlikely that a trafficker is going to take this risk and bring just one child into the UK. It is likely there was a group."

According to the World Health Organisation as many as 7,000 kidneys are illegally obtained by traffickers each year around the world.

While there is a black market for organs such as hearts, lungs and livers, kidneys are the most sought after organs because one can be removed from a patient without any ill effects.

The process involves a number of people including the recruiter who identifies the victim, the person who arranges their transport, the medical professionals who perform the operation and the salesman who trades the organ.

The government’s report also found that there has been a rise in the number of adults trafficked to the UK, with the number of women rising by 12 per cent to 786 and the number of men by almost a third to 400. They include growing numbers of British men are being exploited for "paving or ground works" in this country or abroad.

Details of the scale of human trafficking in Britain were published as the government announced plans to give modern day slave drivers a maximum sentence. Under the proposals, offenders who already have a conviction for a serious sexual or violent offence will receive an automatic life sentence. The current maximum custodial sentence for trafficking is 14 years.

James Brokenshire, crime and security minister, said: "Modern slavery is an appalling evil in our midst."

"All this is a good start, but we need everyone to play a part - government, law enforcement, business charities - if we are to consign slavery to the history books where it belongs."

The Bill, which will be published this year in draft form for pre-legislative scrutiny, will pull together into a single act the offences used to prosecute slave drivers. It will also introduce Trafficking Prevention Orders to restrict the activity and movement of convicted traffickers and stop them from committing further offences.



This doesn't make sense to me - who would do the surgery to transplant the organs? How could the organs even be used?

[Riki]

Money talks... there are people out there willing to pay any price for the organ, and there are crooked doctors who will do the surgery if the price is right...

[UkrainianTracksuit]

Are these rhetorical questions?     I thought everyone knew the answers to this.  The article answered some questions too.   

Who would do the surgery to transplant the organs?
There are doctors and medical professionals (like the article said) that are deeply involved with the organized criminal gangs (worldwide multinational connections) that traffic the victims.  They have private clinics set up so that patients are in and out without many people knowing what’s going on.  Sometimes, it’s as simple as a house.  It is through the doctors’ connections made through networking around the world (I recall one place being a medical convention), gang connections to find the people and those from affluent countries looking for private clinics that there is a “waiting list” for organs on the black market too.  As you know, any major city has various underground organizations at work.

How could the organs even be used?
Traffickers know when the organs will be “available” (sorry, I don’t know a better term) and arrange it so that the customers will be around/prepped for the surgery.  Or, someone is on standby with the appropriate cooling containters to hightail the organ out of there.  I don’t know about all but for some countries, their health systems cover the care of their citizens who found an organ abroad.  So, they could return home and receive post-op care and prescriptions.  (Laws are changing now though.  If you can’t prove the origins of the organs, insurance won’t cover you.)  If the customer doesn’t make it, as we know, as long as the higher ups are paid, it isn’t a big deal to them.

And now, I feel really creeped out even talking about this.     Spent too much time in security studies!

[Bill Peckham]

Really? there are transplant surgeries going on in people's apartments? The article implies to my reading that the girl was meant to be killed, if they are taking organs - plural - so this would mean that there is a murder, with multiple surgeries going on at once involving dozens of medical professionals, several sick individuals and their families (individuals who are at least the same blood type to all benefit from the same donor) and a pretty large facility ... seriously? I find it hard to believe. I know people are brought in to the US for kidney transplants, situations where they will pose as an altruistic living donor, a long lost cousin and go through the medical system but that's not what the article is describing.

[UkrainianTracksuit]

I didn’t say apartments and I said homes were one option.  (Rumours of "the yellow house" in Albania) This is what Interpol would describe as  “clandestine conditions”.  I stated more than once operations take place in private clinics.  While not in the UK, the most famous case of a private clinic used for trafficked organs was Medicus.  It was shut down in ‘08 when all those involved were arrested.  In April of this year, the doctor was convicted with organized crime and human trafficking whilst his anaesthetist (plus assistants) were convicted with bodily harm.  (Source: BalkanInsight and every single newspaper known to man.)  So, yes, it was a busy, large and equipped clinic.  The difference was the mafia connections and “donors” were trafficked from the poorest nations for their surgeries.  That clinic performed surgeries for approximately 10 years.  I am sure you can figure the math.  (Both organs consumed and money swindled) And yes, by organs, I inferred heart, lungs and liver.  Yes, that would mean bodies.  Since this is organized crime committing these acts, do you really think they care it is murder?  Obviously not.  But, it is bigger than murder hence we have the involvement of organizations like Interpol.  Furthermore, they have men that do the job of disposal.  With undocumented trafficked people, who is to know where they came from and who would look for them?  Nobody.  Whilst I don’t know the steps of “who got what organ and how”, it’s fair to say the these doctors did complete blood typing and used the blood match in a group of folks that would be trafficked.  Many return to their home countries (from Israel, Saudi Arabia and western Europe) in fair condition.

(While not a trafficked person, the Telegraph posted a story on September 11, 2012 about how a war crimes case witness gave an interview how he removed a heart from a living man so that it could be whisked away to a foreign patient.  It is assumed this case was linked to Medicus.) 

Like I said, organized crime groups are working in every major city.  It’s easy to take practices that worked in one country into another.  And to be blunt, it's always the same players.  If this wasn’t occuring, I don’t think Interpol would’ve listed human trafficking for organs as one of the forms of trafficking.  This is straight from the Interpol website:
Trafficking in humans for the purpose of using their organs, in particular kidneys, is a rapidly growing field of criminal activity. In many countries, waiting lists for transplants are very long, and criminals have seized this opportunity to exploit the desperation of patients and potential donors. The health of victims, even their lives, is at risk as operations may be carried out in clandestine conditions with no medical follow-up

And this is from the United Nations' Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking:
Trafficking in organ trade is an organized crime, involving a host of offenders. The recruiter who identifies the vulnerable person, the transporter, the staff of the hospital/ clinic and other medical centres, the medical professionals, the middlemen and contractors, the buyers, the banks where organs are stored are all involved in the racket. It is a fact that the entire racket is rarely exposed and therefore, the dimensions are yet to be appropriately fathomed.

*slaps forehead* How could I forget organ banks!  There's another answer to how organs can be used.

So, this is happening and sadly, this poor girl and others are just pawns in a new growing market.  Maybe we can expect to hear more stories like this.  Sorry to get all heavy but crime in the Balkans was my graduate thesis.