The woman, who has been wanted by Interpol since November 2020, was convicted for taking part in an organ harvesting crime group from 2017 to 2019 before she was arrested at the Polish border
A Ukrainian woman who was reportedly jailed for participating in a black market human organ trading gang that sold 56 kidneys has now been detained in Poland, prosecutors said.
Ksenia P, as she was referred to under Polish privacy laws, was detained at a railway crossing between Poland and Ukraine under an Interpol red notice. The prosecutors didn’t say why the woman wasn’t in prison in Kazakhstan, where she was convicted, or when she was jailed. The woman has been wanted by Interpol since November 2020.
An Interpol red notice is a request to provisionally arrest someone pending extraction of similar legal action. The woman was convicted for her part in the crime group’s illegal collection of human tissues and organs from 2017 to 2019 before selling them on the black market.
She was also convicted of illegally obtaining “kidneys from 56 injured parties in Kazakhstan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Thailand” for financial benefit and of “making the crimes committed a permanent source of income”, the Bangkok Post reports.
The prosecution filed a court motion for one week’s temporary arrest so that she could be extradited to Kazakhstan. Previously, China was accused of harvesting organs from living prisoners for transplants.
Since 1984, harvesting organs from executed prisoners has been legal in China but human rights groups have become increasingly concerned the authoritarian state has been operating on some prisoners before they are dead.
China has some of the shortest waiting times for transplants in the world despite the fact it has relatively low numbers of people signed up to donate their organs.
Research from Australian National University’s Mathew Robertson has found it is likely some prisoners, often from marginalised political groups, were operated on while still alive.
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