IN the private patient unit of the Royal Free Hospital, London, Sonia Ekweremadu, the 25-year-old daughter of the then deputy president of the Nigerian senate, waited for a kidney donor.
Private organ donation in the UK is limited to immediate blood-tied relatives, but Sonia carried a rare gene that ruled out family donors.
PASonia Ekweremadu with Daniel, the man who was brought into the UK to donate his organ[/caption]
Ekweremadu – FacebookThe scheme was masterminded by her father Ike Ekweremadu, an influential Nigerian politician[/caption]
Met PolicePhysician Obinna Obeta served as the middleman for the operation[/caption]
To help find a donor, her father Ike, 60, approached physician Obinna Obeta, who sourced *’Daniel’, a 21-year-old street vendor from Lagos, Nigeria, and a UK visa was fast-tracked for him.
Sonia’s father assured the hospital – where 140 private kidney transplants are conducted every year – that Daniel was her cousin and a match.
But a court would later hear that a broker, in return for £1,500, had coerced Daniel into giving up his kidney.
The operation didn’t go ahead because hospital staff believed he didn’t understand he was going to have an organ removed.
Despite their suspicions, staff did not inform the police.
They only got involved after Daniel, fearing Obeta was going to have his kidney removed back in Nigeria instead, ran away and slept on the street until he had the courage to go to the authorities.
The Metropolitan Police’s modern slavery chief investigator Esther Richardson said the donor was “treated as a commodity,” and called the exchange “a transactional process just like any drugs or firearm deal”.
Esther said: “Had this been successful, the victim would have had long-term medical implications that may even have had the requirement for dialysis.”
She adds: “He is innocent and naive. Having never been on a flight, he was petrified the plane would fall from the sky.”
Obeta engaged in witchcraft to try to brainwash his victim not to escape, which is a common tool in the trafficker’s arsenal, especially in Nigeria where a curse is regularly performed on women being groomed for sex trafficking.
Central NewsThe rich lawmaker arranged for a man to donate his kidney to his daughter Sonia[/caption]
Met PoliceBeatrice was sentenced to four years[/caption]
After an investigation, Sonia’s father Ike Ekweremadu was arrested, convicted and sentenced to more than nine years in prison for trafficking the street vendor for his kidney.
His wife Beatrice, 56, was sentenced to four years and six months in prison. Obeta was convicted for helping traffic the street vendor.
During the trial at the Old Bailey in 2022, the court heard Obeta had earlier received a successful kidney transplant himself at the Royal Free Hospital.
His donor was also a young man he had falsely presented as his cousin. No prosecutions were ever carried forward on that case.
The case against the Ekweremadus was the first of its kind to be successfully tried under the UK’s 2015 Modern Slavery Act, introduced to crack down on organ trafficking and other forms of exploitation.
Daniel, who now lives under police protection in the UK, told investigators he “owed” Obeta his kidney in exchange for a visa and permit to stay in the UK.
“He [Obeta] did not tell me he brought me here for this reason,” Daniel said. “He did not tell me anything about this. I would not have agreed. My body is not for sale.”
Sonia, who was believed to be still awaiting a kidney transplant, was not charged with any crimes as she believed her donor was a relative she had never met before.
Sinister means
The global organ trafficking trade is said to be worth £1.3billion annually
GettyStatistics show that almost 10 per cent of organ transplants are from organ trafficking[/caption]
Middlemen regularly try to cut deals between donors and beneficiaries
Although organ trafficking is rare inside the UK, the global organ trafficking trade was believed to be worth as much as £1.3billion annually.
In the second part of her book, investigative journalist Barbie Latza Nadeau has laid bare the extent of the sale of body parts, banned by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 1987.
Almost 10 per cent of all transplants are from trafficked organs, according to the Global Financial Integrity think tank.
The WHO estimates 10,000 kidneys are traded on the black market a year, averaging more than one illegal kidney transplanted every hour of every day.
There are three categories of organ donors. Firstly, legitimate donors who have joined the NHS’s Organ Donor Register or those who have not “opted out” from the system, as it stands in the UK, meaning their organs can be used in the event of their death.
The second category is those who are murdered or trafficked for their organs without consent.
He [Obeta] did not tell me anything about this. I would not have agreed. My body is not for sale.
Daniel
They may be placed under duress, which can include debt bondage or extortion, and forced to sell a kidney or even a cornea, after which they continue living.
In the worst cases, they may be killed for vital organs like their lungs, heart or pancreas, which are sold to desperately sick buyers for large sums of money.
The third category is a living person who knowingly consents to sell an organ like a kidney for financial gain. This can be done illicitly on the black market, or legitimately, for example, to help a loved one.
“Organ trafficking may be facilitated by corrupt officials or criminal groups and may include brokers or other middlemen who connect individuals providing the organ with prospective recipients, negotiate the price, and identify medical facilities where the transplant can occur,” a 2021 report to US Congress said.
In 2023, the crime data-gathering group Havocscope, which keeps a tally on the black market in organ prices based on open-source information, including police reports and the dark web, listed the average global price paid to a kidney seller as £3,800, enough to support a family for several years in some developing nations.
The buyer, however, pays on average £116,100, depending on the country.
Brokers in places where organ trafficking is more prevalent, like the Philippines, make no more than £1,160 a kidney, while in places where the trade is less transparent, like Yemen, they can make up to £46,400.
Someone in China will pay around £36,700 for a kidney, while a transplant tourist in Israel will pay around £9,700.
Vital organs, which require a deceased donor, are naturally more expensive. A lung goes for about £242,000 in Europe, the group found.
For those in the organ trafficking business, the real money being made is in the US and countries that do not have the protective layer of a national public healthcare system.
In the US, kidneys sell for around £193,400 on the black market, skin around £8 an inch and a heart can fetch £774,000, according to the Medical Futurist.
In countries where national healthcare systems exist, private patients with the right connections can expect to pay £23,000 for a cornea, £116,000 for a set of lungs, £100,000 for a heart and £76,000 for a liver.
Eyes sold on WhatsApp
In 2020, one organ broker in Beirut admitted selling 30 kidneys a year, harvested from the residents of refugee camps and once bought an eye from a desperate donor.
The deal was done over WhatsApp and even included a photo of the eye to see if the buyer liked the colour.
There are hundreds of thousands of people on kidney transplant waiting lists worldwide, with the average wait in the UK between two to three years, and kidneys are available for only around one-third.
Mortality rates on waiting lists are high, between 15 and 30 per cent, depending on location – factors that allow for the exploitation of desperate people.
As well as backstreet clinics, organs are harvested in private clinics like that in London’s Royal Free Hospital and similar settings all over the world.
Intensive medical expertise is required not only to remove organs but to keep them in a fit state for transplantation.
Human organs have a short shelf life outside the body. Kidneys, if kept properly, can remain viable for up to 36 hours after removal and the donor can go on to live a normal life.
Things become murkier when organs like the heart are involved. The suggestion that people are murdered for their organs implies an unthinkable complicity by medical doctors and hospitals.
But a transplant doctor in Italy, who preferred to remain anonymous, insists that it is not the surgeon’s duty to vet the organs they are presented with.
The trafficking ‘business’
THERE have been several reported cases of human organ trafficking from around the world. Middlemen often target desperate people living in poverty.
Abu Jaafar, a human organ trafficker, revealed he arranged the sale of 30 organs harvested from Syrian refugees in three years, including the eye. He also said desperate migrants had no other way to make money. “Business is booming,” he said, chillingly. One of his victims was a 17-year-old Syrian, who fled to Lebanon after his father and brothers were killed. Struggling to support his mother and five sisters, he agreed to sell his right kidney for $8,000 (£6,250). He was blindfolded and driven to a temporary ‘clinic’ where the operation was carried out, before being nursed for a few days by his ‘broker’ and sent on his way. “I don’t really care if the client dies,” the organ dealer told the BBC. “I got what I wanted. It’s not my problem what happens next as long as the client got paid.”
In 2019, a man named Dawitt spoke about how he sold one of his kidneys for $5,000 in Egypt after escaping forced military conscription in Sudan. He said: “How [could] I say no to $5,000 (£3817) when I have nothing and my family need help?” Explaining the excruciating op, he added: “We drove all night to get to the hospital. I remember walking downstairs and waiting to speak with the doctor. Then I entered a room where I was asked to change my clothes and lie down on the bed. All I remember after that was waking up and feeling a sharp pain in my side. I started shouting and cursing until the broker came to take me back to the apartment.”
In 2008, a multi-million-pound illegal kidney transplant network was busted in Gurgaon, New Delhi, in India. The victims of the gang were from impoverished families and their organs were transplanted into clients from countries such as the United Kingdom, United States, Saudi Arabia, and Canada. Donors were lured into the scheme with the promise of a mere $300 (£229).
Last year, online magazine The Diplomat, ran an interview with Cheng Pei Ming, a political prisoner and victim of forced organ donation in China. He underwent repeated blood tests and forced surgery in 2002. Years later, US medical examination revealed parts of his liver and a portion of his lung had been surgically removed without his consent.
In Khartoum, Sudan, a desperate woman who says her children were suffering from hunger was tricked into believing she was being smuggled into Italy for work. But when she got to Cairo in Egypt, she was told she wouldn’t be going to Italy and would have to donate a kidney. She was promised $2,000 if she complied. If not, they threatened to take it by force. She told The Guardian: “Then I was in a room with medical equipment, but this is all I can tell you. They locked me in the room and told me to think of my children.”
In 2024, it was reported that a tribal woman in Kannur, Kerala India made allegations against her husband and a donor agent. She was subjected to medical blood tests under duress and was threatened with death if she didn’t comply. She was able to escape a planned surgery.
In cases of car accidents, for example, the doctor will be told a vital organ is available while a specialist team keeps the donor alive on life support.
The donor is then taken off life support, usually in accordance with family wishes or living wills.
Iran remains the only country in the world where buying and selling organs is legal for its citizens.
All other countries have banned the practice, at least on paper, but some countries, including China, have been accused by the group Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting of executing prisoners to harvest organs for their large population.
Globally, the demand for organs is high and getting higher because of the increase in cancer, chronic kidney disease and cardiovascular diseases, especially in developed nations.
In 2022, 157,494 transplants were carried out and WHO estimates that ten per cent of those used trafficked organs – meaning 15,749 organs came from people who either sold them illegally or were killed for them.
Organs are also trafficked on the battlefield, where prisoners of war are killed so their organs can be harvested for dictators and injured soldiers.
Battlefield organ trafficking was a common activity in the Syrian civil war and has been documented in Yemen, and most recently, the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, where the illegal trade in human organs was well established before Russia’s invasion.
*Name has been changed to protect the victim
AFPBattlefield human trafficking has been documented in countries such as Syria and Yemen[/caption]
ReutersMen show off their scars from organs taken from them[/caption]
GettySurgeons may be duped into using trafficked organs (stock photo)[/caption] Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]
