Migrants who can’t pay are sold to organ harvesters

By NEOnline | TB

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Migrants who don’t have enough money to pay for their passage to Italy are sold by traffickers to Egyptians who kill them in order to sell their organs. This is according to former smuggler who has been cooperating with anti-mafia investigators in Palermo.
The ANSA news agency quoted the unidentified man as saying: “The Egyptians come equipped to remove the organ and transport it in insulated bags”.
At a press conference on July 4, the chief investigator, Renato Cortese, said: “We used the same investigative techniques that we use in mafia investigations. It is clearly more difficult in this case, since, for example, we need interpreters for the wiretaps, since those under investigation speak foreign languages or dialects. The aim now is to try to understand how the enormous earnings of the organization are re-invested”.
In a separate report, Deutsche Welle (DW), Germany’s international broadcaster, noted that the man – who police did not name – had “for the first time in Italy, given a complete reconstruction of the criminal activity of one of the most ruthless international migrant-trafficking bands, operating in North Africa and in Italy”.
“I decided to cooperate because there have been too many deaths,” authorities quoted the 32-year-old man as saying. He reportedly added that thousands of refugees who have drowned attempting to make perilous Mediterranean crossings comprise only a “small fraction” of the overall death toll.
According to DW, the man’s testimony allowed the police to raid a small perfume shop in central Rome on June 13, where they seized €526,000 and an address book containing information on other members of the ring.
Arrests were made in 10 cities across Italy and the suspects were accused of people smuggling, drug trafficking and various financial crimes. Their nationalities were: 25 Eritreans, 12 Ethiopians and one Italian.
As reported by the Reuters news agency, Europe’s worst migration crisis since World War Two has seen hundreds of thousands of people pay smugglers to make the trip to Europe from Libya in often unseaworthy boats and dinghies. Italy has borne much of the brunt, with about 60,000 migrants arriving by boat on its shores this year.