(MENAFN- The Journal Of Turkish Weekly) Syrian regime forces are actively engaged in organ trafficking, the human rights organization Violation Documentation Center in Syria told Anadolu Agency on Tuesday.
Both soldiers and civilians killed in the conflict are being used as sources for organs, which are then sold on an international network, the center said.
The reports are confirmed by Hossain Noufel, head of the department of forensic medicine at Damascus University, cited in the Syria Report.
According to international human rights organization Amnesty International, over 50,000 detainees have been killed inside Syrian prisons and most bodies were never returned to their families.
Sources from the embattled neighborhood of Waer in Homs told the Syria Report that intelligence officers in Syria's Air force are removing the organs from the dead which are then buried in the local cemetery.
The human organs are being sold in countries like India, Russia, Iran and North Korea, according to the center. Organs are priced according to their importance: $20,000 for a heart, $25,000 for an eye and $15,000 for a kidney, while cartilage and muscle fibers are sold for $10,000, according to the Syria Report.
Free Syrian army sources claim that the Russian mafia is the organizer of the international network for the trafficking.
Forensic evidence, reported by a team of international prosecutors and investigators last year, support the reports of organ trafficking.
The team of investigators made available photos of prisoners killed by Syrian armed forces. "The bodies in the photos showed signs of starvation, brutal beatings, strangulation, and other forms of torture and killing," according to the report.
Relatives of thousands of these torture victims in security chambers have been prevented from seeing the bodies, according to the UN Human Rights Commissioner.
Prisoners killed in this way would provide viable sources of live organs, according to Noufel.
Abdul Kader Hasan, head of the Medical Association in Homs, told the Syria Report that five doctors had been stripped of their memberships because of their relationship to the organ-trading network.
Sources mentioned that many public and private hospitals are involved in the network as many staff members have experience in transferring and storing organs. The doctors are reported to be from Lebanon, Iraq, Iran and Syria, while the stolen organs are said to be transferred to Europe, America, Russia and Israel, the Syria Report said.
More than 220,000 people have been killed in the conflict in Syria since it began in 2011 with anti-government demonstrations.
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