The Chechen Times

Harvesting of organs from Chechen hostages

Umar Khanbiyev, health minister in president Maskhadov's government, claims that young Chechens captured by Russian federal troops and reported missing are used as donors of human organs, and then killed.

In his article "Harvesting of human organs from Chechen hostages" posted on the "Kavkaz-tsentr" website, Khanbiyev relates many cases when dead bodies of missing young Chechens were found in Chechnya, bearing marks that vital organs such as heart, kidney, liver, pancreas etc had been removed from them when they were alive.

The author holds in his article that during the war in Chechnya over 30,000 young Chechen males have been taken out of Chechnya to Russia, mainly to Moscow and Moscow region, where they fell victim to illegal organ transplantation, and then killed.

The minister says that according to his sources, the number of transplant surgeries in Russia has increased three times since 1999, while prices for donor organs have dropped by an average 50%. He alleges that all this illegal activity of kidnapping Chechens for forced organ harvesting and subsequent killing of these Chechens is being controlled by the Federal Security Service (FSB) of Russia.

The health minister of Chechnya claims that among medical institutions that use transplant organs from live Chechen hostages are leading medical clinics in Moscow and St.- Petersburg. He further says that to his knowledge 60 clinics and medical institutions in Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus use organs of Chechen donors doomed to die.

[13.03.2003 15:51] Prima News Agency

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Webauthor's comment: Khanbiyev is not new to these allegations. See: here and the photographs of corpses found in mass graves undergone surgery here.