SAN JOSE, Costa Rica, October 5, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) – Costa Rica is fast becoming an “epicentre for illegal organ trafficking,” a lawyer and human trafficking expert is warning.
Four Costa Rican doctors and a Greek pizzeria owner are currently on trial in San Jose with charges of trafficking illegally-sourced organs between 2011 and 2013.
The gang’s customers were patients from Israel, Europe, and even the U.S., anyone who was eager to jump to the front of the line for new kidneys. Spurred on by clients willing to pay as much as $140,000 USD per organ, the organ trafficking ring actively sought out poor Costa Ricans as “donors.”
“Costa Rica may be transforming from a tiny player in the global organ trafficking trade into an epicenter for illegal organ trafficking, in large part due to corruption that has helped fuel a sophisticated transplant tourism industry, as well as the global imbalance between the limited supply of kidneys and the high demand for transplants,” human trafficking expert Luz Estella Ortiz-Nagle told La Nacion in an extensive interview.
Paying people for their organs is illegal in Costa Rica.
The San Jose trafficking ring was allegedly led by kidney specialist Francisco
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