Today, it was announced that the Southern District Police have been investigating since last month a network that was involved in organ trafficking and flew young women aged 18-20 to Turkey, so that their organs could be harvested there and transplanted into Israeli patients in need of kidneys. This was in exchange for 20,000 shekels. The police are still searching for the main suspect in the case, a man from Beersheba in his 40s with a criminal record. He is suspected of mediating between older women and young women he knew personally, in order to coordinate the transplants.
It is suspected that emotional pressure was exerted on the girls to make them agree to undergo the procedure.
The police have detained two other men for questioning who are also suspected of being intermediaries between the two parties, but so far no evidence has been found that the kidneys were actually sold. The police have also questioned a doctor from central Israel who is suspected of being responsible for the suitability tests and the medical advice required prior to the transplant. During his interrogation, the doctor admitted that he knew the main suspect, who used to send patients to him.
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The affair, the main points of which were first published inChannel 10, began to be investigated about a month ago. A couple of parents complained to the police that they could not find their 18-year-old daughter, and after discovering correspondence she had maintained on Facebook on her computer, they realized that she was on her way to the Florence Nightingale Hospital in Istanbul, where one of her kidneys would be removed for money. The parents were finally able to reach their daughter and convince her not to undergo the operation.
When she returned to Israel, she admitted to the police that she had flown to Turkey to donate a kidney. The investigation revealed that her friend, a 20-year-old woman from the south, who was with her in the hospital,Donated a kidney to a resident of the center in her 50s, whom she met about a year and a half ago. According to her, she did so because she felt sorry for her, and therefore decided to donate her kidney without receiving payment for it. The young woman noted that she knew that the recipient paid about 300,000 shekels for the donation, but insisted that she received nothing. Contrary to her version, the police suspect that she was compensated about 20,000 shekels.
The investigation also revealed that another woman in her 50s, who was in the Turkish hospital to receive the girl's kidney, did not return to Israel and used the American passport she had to fly with him to the United States.
The commander of the Negev region, Lieutenant Colonel Peretz Amar, said: "This is about exploiting girls or young women who are in very serious financial distress, and using considerable funds, they manage to motivate them to come to a foreign country and donate a kidney or other organ for people who need it." The police also claim that this is a network that operated not only in Israel, but also in other countries. "They took advantage of the girls' financial hardships and promised them tens of thousands of dollars for the kidneys.".
