“The apostate’s life and organs do not have to be respected and may be taken with impunity.” — Islamic State document found during a raid in December by U.S. Special Forces in Syria.
“Former prisoner Abo Rida stated that surgeons for IS terror group removed kidneys and corneas from prisoners. He said that they were told that jihadists were more deserving of organs.” — Anne Speckhard, International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism.
Iraq’s Ambassador to the UN, Mohammed Alhakim, asked the world body last year to investigate the killing of a dozen Iraqi doctors who rejected IS demands to cut out people’s organs.
According to the World Health Organization, illegal organ trading generates between $600 million and $1.2 billion in profits each year.
Charges that Islamic State (IS) engages in organ trading — taking body parts from their victims in Iraq and Syria and selling them to traffickers in Turkey — have surfaced again.
The Iranian news network Alalam reported on October 6 that IS has set up a market in Turkey where it sells human organs stolen from innocent people. Alalam also posted a photograph of a person whose organ was taken.
The Iraqi News also reported that IS has kidnapped and sold many children in Syria to Turkish organ traffickers in order to finance its operations.
Turkey’s government-funded news service, Anadolu Agency, reported months ago that ISIS opened a “medical school” in Northern Syria.
Wayne Madsen, an American investigative reporter and a former intelligence analyst at the US National Security Agency (NSA), told Gatestone that IS has been, and is, involved in organ trading. “The Uyghur battalions of ISIS are heavily engaged in this. They are also known to be involved in organ harvesting in China.”
“We have no reason to doubt them given similar atrocities that have been documented and other heinous crimes for which ISIL has taken credit,” U.S. State Department said in response to charges of IS’s organ harvesting. In December, the U.S. government revealed that it had obtained an ISIS document during a raid by Special Forces in Syria. “The apostate’s life and organs do not have to be respected and may be taken with impunity,” the document said.
Anne Speckhard wrote that ISIS is involved in organ smuggling and earns profits from it. “Former prisoner Abo Rida stated that surgeons for IS terror group removed kidneys and corneas from prisoners. He said that they were told that jihadists were more deserving of organs,” she added.
Speckhard told Gatestone that given their mentality – that anyone who does not believe as they do can be killed – it is believable that IS is involved in organ trading: “Defectors we talked to said it is happening.”
According to press reports, there is high demand for organs such as kidneys and hearts. Based on the same reports, a kidney is sold in the Turkish market for $4,000 and a heart for $6,000.
