Turkish Forum

Category: Kosovo

  • EU Security Official In Kosovo Removed For ‘Racist Comments’

    EU Security Official In Kosovo Removed For ‘Racist Comments’

    EU Police

    PRISTINA — The European Union’s police and justice mission in Kosovo (EULEX) says one of its officials has been suspended amid charges he offended and abused his Kosovar colleagues, RFE/RL’s Balkan Service reports.

    EULEX spokesman Anne Blanksma told RFE/RL that “[EULEX] head of mission [Xavier de Marnhac] intends for the head of the Close Protection Unit to leave the mission.”

    Blanksma added that the man in question, who has not been named, has the right to appeal his suspension and possible dismissal.

    The suspension came after EULEX launched an internal investigation into charges by Kosovar members of the Close Protection Unit — which provides security for de Marnhac and other VIPs — that the head of the unit offended them with various ethnic and religious comments.

    Local media reported that the EULEX official also threatened local staff not to report his comments to the authorities.

    Blanksma said the entire Close Protection Unit will be reorganized, with several local staffers being reassigned to other jobs within EULEX.

    Hajredin Kuci, Kosovar’s deputy prime minister, declared last week that “the latest event [involving EULEX] does not interfere in the relations between the government and EULEX.”

    But the Kosovo Council for the Defense of Human Rights (KCDHR) said the incident is a clear case of racism.

    “Offending the national identity, religion, and national symbols of [ethnic] Albanian staff is not a simple case of misconduct but pure racism,” the council’s Baki Svirca said.

    The KCDHR also called for new rules to be established regarding the immunity of international staff working in Kosovo. Currently, foreign workers cannot be prosecuted by Kosovar authorities but are rather subject to the justice system in their countries of origin despite alleged crimes taking place in Kosovo.

    EULEX (EU Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo) has about 3,200 staff members and is the largest civilian mission operating under the EU’s Common Security and Defense Policy. Its main duty is to assist and support Kosovar officials on police, judiciary, and customs issues.

    Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 and has been recognized by 75 countries.

    RFERL

  • While you were watching Egypt, Balkans are like a bomb ready to explode

    While you were watching Egypt, Balkans are like a bomb ready to explode

    SHARP-EYED observers have noted that some of the protestors that brought down Egypt’s president used the clenched-fist logo of  Otpor, the well-organised, foreign-financed civic resistance movement that helped topple Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. Parts of the Serbian press, notes Florian Bieber, an academic who works on Balkan affairs, have claimed that former Otpor activists helped train some of the opposition groups.

    balkans

    With the world’s attention on the Arab world, the political instability gripping much of the western Balkans has largely been ignored. Yet so serious is the unrest here—including mass demonstrations in Belgrade, Tirana and Skopje—that one diplomat told me his country’s foreign ministry had asked him if he thought that Egypt-style revolution might sweep northwards into the Balkans. (His answer was an emphatic “no”.) Here is a round-up of recent developments:

    Kosovo held an election on December 12th, but still has no government. Following allegations of “industrial-scale” fraud, re-runs had to be held. Until an apparent breakthrough yesterday, the country’s politicians had been unable to secure the basic outlines of a deal which would permit the formation of a government. Now, however, a faction within the Democratic Party of Kosovo of Hashim Thaci, the acting prime minister, has been forced to drop its insistence that its man, Jakup Krasniqi, the acting president, be given the job formally.

    Behgjet Pacolli, a tycoon, now looks set to become president. In exchange his party, the New Kosovo Alliance, will enter into coalition with Mr Thaci. Mr Pacolli is married to a Russian, which, given Moscow’s refusal to recognise Kosovo’s independence, leaves some Kosovars appalled.

    Two years after independence, Mr Thaci has never been so weak politically. He has been weakened by a row with Fatmir Limaj, the outgoing minister of transport, who enjoys much support in the party. Internationally, his standing has been shredded by a recent Council of Europe report making all sorts of lurid allegations against him. EULEX, the EU’s police mission in Kosovo, is now investigating. Partly as a consequence Kosovo’s European integration process has failed to get off the ground. Five of the EU’s 27 members do not recognise Kosovo.

    The situation in Macedonia is little better. Nikola Gruevski, the prime minister, has set off for Washington seeking support for his attempts to speed EU and NATO integration, but he may get his ear chewed off when he arrives. Solving the almost 20-year-old name dispute with Greece appears less of a priority in Skopje than ever. Construction of a giant  plinth that will support a statue of Alexander the Great is proceeding briskly, guaranteeing fresh outrage in Greece.

    The Social Democratic opposition has pulled out of parliament, and Macedonia is gripped by the saga of A1 Television, whose bank accounts have been frozen for a second time by the courts. Mr Gruevski’s opponents say that the government is trying to muzzle the last bastion of free speech in the country. Nonsense, claim government supporters. The courts are simply clamping down on tax evasion. In fact, the two arguments do not contradict each other. The smart money is on an early election in June.

    Meanwhile a small group of Albanians and Macedonians fought a pitched battle in Skopje castle on February 13th, where the government has begun building what it says is a museum, in the shape of a church. The problem is that the castle is in an Albanian, and hence Muslim, part of town. When the Albanians protested, saying that the structure was being built over an ancient Illyrian site,  Pasko Kuzman, the chief archaeologist, said construction would stop. But builders went in at night to continue their work, which led the Albanians to try and dismantle the structure. And so on, and so on.

    Over in Albania the prime minister, Sali Berisha, has accused the opposition of staging a coup, following a demonstration on January 21st that went horribly wrong when Republican Guards allegedly fired on opposition supporters, killing four. The demonstration sprang from charges by the opposition, led by Edi Rama, the Socialist mayor of Tirana, that Mr Berisha was returned to power in June 2009 by fraudulent elections. Unlike Macedonia, Albania is a member of NATO, but its EU integration path has effectively stalled.*

    The Serbian government has been holed and is taking on water—but has not sunk yet. Mladjan Dinkic, head of the G17 Plus party and Serbia’s deputy prime minister, had been openly criticising his governmental colleagues from President Boris Tadic’s Democratic Party. On February 14th Mirko Cvetkovic, the prime minister, moved to sack him. Mr Dinkic resigned today but stopped short of pulling his party out of the government.

    How long the Serbian government can limp on like this is anyone’s guess. Tomislav Nikolic, leader of the opposition Serbian Progressive Party, has said that unless new elections are called before April 5th he will lead more protests in Belgrade. Watch this space.

    Last but not least, Bosnia and Hercegovina. Elections there were held on October 3rd, but there is still no government at state level. No surprise there. Progress on anything, let alone EU integration, has been stalled in Bosnia since 2006 in the wake of the failure of the so-called “April Package” of constitutional reforms. Al Jazeera recently announced plans for a Balkans channel, based in Sarajevo and broadcasting in what it delicately calls “the regional language”. Given the station’s role as the cheerleader of revolt in Tunisia and Egypt, one can understand diplomats’ concerns.

    Global Agenda

  • The doctor at the heart of Kosovo’s organ scandal

    The doctor at the heart of Kosovo’s organ scandal

    The Turkish donor and the Israeli recipient were laid down on beds beside each other before the kidney was exchanged. Both men would later confirm that their eyes met for a brief few seconds before the anaesthetic took effect.

    Yilman Altun, 23, was the desperate young Turk who said he was promised a rich reward for his organ by a broker in Istanbul. Alongside him lay Bezalel Shafran, a 74-year-old Israeli who had paid £76,400 for the black-market kidney he hoped would prolong his life.

    According to an indictment released this week, the surgeon transferring the kidney between these strangers in the Medicus clinic in a deprived suburb near the Kosovan capital, Pristina, was Yusuf Ercin Sonmez, a 53-year-old medic.

    Yusuf Ercin Sonmez 007

    Sonmez, a Turkish surgeon, is now the subject of an international manhunt. Prosecutors allege he played a central role in the illegal organ transplant clinic, and this week an official inquiry linked the trade to Kosovo’s prime minister, Hashim Thaci.

    Sonmez, a notorious figure known as “Doctor Vulture”, is wanted by Interpol for “crimes against life and health, people smuggling, trafficking and illegal immigration”. An investigation by the Guardian established Sonmez as having been a key player in the unscrupulous organ market for more than 10 years. He was seen this year in Azerbaijian, where, intelligence sources believe, he was doing kidney transplants at the university hospital in Baku.

    Azerbaijan’s prosecutor-general’s office said last month that an investigation prompted by information from Ukranian police found “citizens of various countries” had been brought into the country for illegal kidney transplants. Four Ukrainian doctors have been arrested in connection with the alleged racket. Azerbaijani press reported that Sonmez was “involved” in the ring, which also did operations in Ecuador. At a press conference in Baku this year, which took place before the warrant for his arrest was made public, Sonmez reportedly denied involvement in organ trafficking.

    According to a charge read out on Tuesday by the EU prosecutor Jonathan Ratel, the alleged role of Sonmez in the Medicus clinic became clear when police raided the property in November 2008. The inquiry had been opened just hours earlier, after Altun, the Turk, fainted at Pristina airport. When officials found an fresh wound on his abdomen, he told them his kidney had been stolen.

    Four anaesthetists and a former permanent secretary in the health ministry, who prosecutors allege abused his office to give Medicus a false licence, have pleaded not guilty. So too has Lutfi Dervishi, Kosovo’s leading urologist, who is accused of setting up the clinic with his son, Arban. Ratel told the court that victims were duped “with the false promise of payments” for their kidneys.

    When the Guardian visited Medicus this week, surgical gowns for the Russians, Moldovans, Kazakhs and Turks intending to lose their organs could be seen through the windows. So too could cardboard boxes containing medical supplies printed with the name Sonmez.

    Dervishi, who still works at Pristina university hospital, was using Medicus business cards and phone numbers in another clinic nearby. He refused to speak to the Guardian this week.

    But it is Sonmez who prosecutors believe has been the central figure in the trafficking. The Turk has been repeatedly arrested for organ transplants in his native country, where colleagues describe him as an accomplished but rebellious surgeon. In 1998, Turkish TV, whose reporters posed as donors, found seven patients, mostly from Israel. Sonmez was later banned from working in Turkey’s public health sector.

    Since then he has been linked to clinics operating on donors and recipients from across the world. He has admitted to doing thousands of transplants, but says that his donors sign disclaimer forms declaring they are giving their organs for humanitarian purposes.

    Police found such forms at Medicus, along with a “vast quantity” of medical equipment and records of all the transplants, according to Ratel, who said that up to 30 victims lost their kidneys in the clinic in just eight months in 2008. Patients from Canada, Germany, Poland and Israel had received organ transplants at the clinic. But despite promises of payment of up to €20,000, the donors had left empty-handed, he said.

    A Council of Europe report into organ trafficking in Kosovo linked the Medicus case to a wider criminal network in the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which began trading in organs in 1999. A faction within the rebel guerilla army loyal to Thaci has been accused of overseeing a racket involving Serb captives. A “handful” were said, in the report, to have been shot in the head, then had their kidneys extracted. It is believed the kidneys were flown to Istanbul in ischemia bags. Thaci has strongly denied the claims.

    A Washington-based intelligence source said the kidneys were sold to Sonmez. It was then that the Turkish doctor was said to have struck up a relationship with Kosovan Albanians, who, investigators believe, are implicated in the Medicus clinic case which unfolded in the confirmation hearing case this week. A judge in Pristina district court will decide whether there is sufficient evidence to proceed to trial.

    “In many respects the two are similar operations. In both cases, you’ve got illegal outfits linking senior players among the Kosovar Albanians trading in the organs of innocent victims, playing into an international racket to profit from the surgeries of Sonmez,” a source said.

    via The doctor at the heart of Kosovo’s organ scandal | World news | The Guardian.

  • Kosovo physicians accused of organ trafficking racket

    Kosovo physicians accused of organ trafficking racket

    kosovo 1785564cThe men, including a former senior Kosovan Health Ministry official, promised poor people from Moldova, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkey up to €14,500 (£12,300) for their organs.

    Those who received the organs – including patients from Canada, Germany, Poland and Israel – paid between €80,000 and €100,000 for them, Ratel said. The victims, however, were never paid, the European Union prosecutor Jonathan Ratel told Pristina District Court.

    He alleged that the “organ-harvesting ring” recruited about 20 foreign nationals with false promises of payments in 2008.

    The seven men have pleaded not guilty to charges ranging from trafficking in persons to unlawful practices of medicine and abuse of power. Two other suspects, a Turkish and an Israeli national, remain at large.

    The prosecution has alleged that Kosovo surgeon Lutfi Dervishi, who is also linked to the Kosovo Liberation Army’s alleged kidnapping and killing of Serb civilians for their organs, is the ringleader of the group.

    According to the court’s indictment, he attended a medical conference in Turkey in 2006 and asked for someone who could perform organ transplants. He was contacted by a Turkish man, Dr. Yusuf Sonmez, six months later.

    Mr Dervishi and Dr Sonmez then allegedly carried out operations in a private medical clinic in the capital, Pristina, run by Mr Dervishi’s son, Arban, who has also been indicted.

    The indictment says an Israeli citizen, Moshe Harel, was allegedly involved in identifying, recruiting and transporting victims and “ensuring the delivery of cash payments prior to surgery.”

    Four other Kosovans, doctors Sokol Hajdini and Driton Jilta, and anaesthetists, Islam Bytyqi and Sylejman Dulla, are also indicted.

    Dr Sonmez and Mr Harel are listed as wanted by Interpol.

    Police were alerted to the network in November 2008, when a Turkish man, Yilmaz Altun, appeared exhausted at Pristina airport while waiting to board a flight home. When questioned by police, he said he had donated his kidney to an Israeli recipient. Kosovo law forbids the removal and transplant of organs.

    All have denied the Kosovo court’s accusations.

    Allegations of the Kosovo Liberation Army’s alleged trade in civilian organs stem from a book by U.N. War Crimes tribunal prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, based on information she has said she received from Western journalists.

    In response to the allegations, Swiss senator Dick Marty led a Council of Europe team of investigators to Kosovo and Albania in 2009.

    The council’s report is to be released to the public in France on Thursday.

    The two year Council of Europe investigation also alleged that Kosovo’s prime minister, Hashim Thaci, was the head of an organised crime ring in the late 1990s that was involved in organ trafficking, assassinations and other crimes.

    According to the draft report, Western powers were complicit in ignoring the activities of the crime ring headed by Mr Thaci.

    “Thaci and these other ‘Drenica Group’ members are consistently named as ‘key players’ in intelligence reports on Kosovo’s mafia-like structures of organised crime,” the report said.

    “We found that the ‘Drenica Group’ had as its chief – or, to use the terminology of organised crime networks, its ‘boss’ – the renowned political operator … Hashim Thaci.”

    In an interview yesterday before the report was released, Mr Thaci said he would not tolerate corruption in his government.

    Kosovo’s government on Tuesday described the report as baseless and defamatory.

    via Kosovo physicians accused of organ trafficking racket – Telegraph.

  • Tera Incognita: Bloody coexistence

    Tera Incognita: Bloody coexistence

    By SETH J.FRANTZMAN
    11/23/2010 22:48

    The bizarre horror and roots of the Kosovo organ-trafficking ring; almost all those involved were respected professionals in their communities.

    irish soldierIn mid-November, the world media reported that Interpol was hunting for seven members of an organ-trafficking ring. They were accused of operating a clinic called Medicus in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. Most news media were excited to reveal that two Israelis were among those named in the 46-page Interpol report. Less interest was shown in the other international members of the ring – Turkish and Albanian Muslims.

    Only one Israeli, Moshe Harel, was wanted by Interpol in connection with the ring. The other Israeli, Zaki Shapira, was listed as an unindicted coconspirator. A Turkish doctor and five Albanians were also indicted for their role in diverse criminal activities such as “trafficking in persons and unlawful exercise of medical activity.”

    THE ORIGINS of the ring appear relatively recent. According to reports, Lutfi Dervishi, a urologist and professor at Pristina University, visited Istanbul in 2006 to attend a conference. At the conference he let it be known that he was looking for someone who could perform organ transplants. He was contacted by Yusuf Sonmez, a Turkish national and surgeon who has a history of involvement with illegal organ harvesting.

    Sonmez maintains a website which claims he completed his residency in surgery at Istanbul University medical faculty in 1984 and was an expert in kidney transplants. According to a November 3 article in Hurriyet he also worked at the Ministry of Health. He completed his first transplant from a live donor in 1993, and by 2006 claimed he had performed more than,1,300 kidney transplants. In 2005 he was running a private hospital in Istanbul. Turkish websites indicate that his hospital was shut down in 2007 after a police raid, during which his brother Bulent was also detained. He received a suspended sentence.

    Sonmez again fell out with the law over organ thefts in 2008. His medical license was revoked and he was banned from the profession for six months – which news outlets criticized as too weak a punishment. At the time Turkish articles called him the “the Turkish butcher” and Hurriyet referred to him as “Frankenstein.” In 2010, when it emerged that he was involved with organ trafficking in Kosovo, he turned up inAzerbaijan, apparently free to go about his bloody business. His status at present is not clear.

    In 2006, while at the height of his power, operating his own clinic prior to the police raids, he contacted Dervishi. Sonmez then contacted a Turkish-Israeli, Harel, who according to the government of Kosovo was born in 1950 in Turkey. Harel later allegedly “identified, recruited and transported the victims, as well as managed the cash payments before the surgeries.” Sonmez, it seems, was also the contact for Shapira, who has a history of brushes with the law regarding organ harvesting.

    Shapira was once head of kidney transplant services at Beilinson Medical Center in Petah Tikva. He was also a member of the Bellagio Task Force on global transport ethics. In the 1990s he ran afoul of ethics charges in Israel and moved to Turkey. In 2007 Shapira was arrested in Turkey; it seems he was already connected with Sonmez’s hospital. Now Sonmez brought Harel and Shapira to Pristina to help run Dervishi’s clinic. The clinic was operated by Dervishi’s son, Arban. Illir Rrecaj, a Kosovo Health Ministry official, granted the clinic a license to do urological checkups but was, according to Interpol, privy to the actual goings on there.

    In October 2008 police suspicions were raised when a poor man was dumped at the Pristina airport and it was found his kidney had been removed. A raid on the Medicus clinic discovered that the organ harvesting ring had been bringing in poverty stricken patients from countries such as Turkey and Russia, promising them 15,000 euros, and then selling their organs for upward of 100,000 euros. Rrecaj was dismissed from his post. On November 4, Harel was arrested.

    BUT ACCORDING to other sources it appears the tentacles of the case go deeper.

    The Serbian newspaper Blic claims that Dervishi was also involved in the murder and harvesting of organs from Serbs who were captured by ethnic Albanian terrorists during the Kosovo war of 1999. After the war there were rumors that Kosovar Albanians were keeping Serb prisoners in camps near the Kosovo border with Albania.

    A Spanish KFOR contingent attempted to penetrate the village of Vrelo but was called back. Carla Del Ponte, the former chief prosecutor of the UN for war crimes committed in Yugoslavia, claimed in her 2008 book that as many as 300 Serbs were murdered for their organs just across the border in the Albanian town of Burrel. The infamous “clinic” in Burrel became known as the “yellow house,” but not until 2004 was it visited by a UN team to investigate the accusations. By then, only a few traces of blood remained.

    According to Blic, in 1998 during the Kosovo crises, “[a] witness told Serbian war crimes prosecutors that he saw Dr. Lutfi Dervishi at locations where it was suspected that organs had been extracted from civilian prisoners and sold later.” Another Serbian source alleges that Shapira was also involved in 1999 in instructing those who harvested the organs, and according to the Croatian magazine Politika, he showed up in Macedonia in the same year, connected to a similar operation.

    This claim is based on the fact that he had Turkish connections who were supporting the Kosovars during the war.

    Whatever the case, it seems the recent organ-trafficking scandal is merely the latest emergence of the dark cloud that has hung over Kosovo for years; it has become a center for human and organ trafficking in Europe.

    What makes the present case so shocking is that almost all those involved were respected professionals in their communities.A professor from Pristina, a member of the Kosovo Health Ministry, an Istanbul doctor and pioneer in organ transplants and a former head of transplant services at Beilinson. What made these men turn evil? What sort of strange dark coexistence is this, where Turks and Israelis work together to steal organs?

    Does their ring have its origins in the dirty war fought in Kosovo in 1998-1999? The anti-Israel and anti-Semitic media like to shed light on supposed Israeli involvement in organ trafficking, but what this case shows is that the networks behind the story have much deeper and more disturbing roots.

  • 7 Charged in Kosovo-Based Organ-Trafficking Ring

    7 Charged in Kosovo-Based Organ-Trafficking Ring

    By DAN BILEFSKY

    Published: November 15, 2010

    PRAGUE — At least seven people have been charged with participating in an international organ-trafficking network based in Kosovo that sold kidneys and other organs from impoverished victims for up to $200,000 to patients from as far away as Israel and Canada, police and senior European Union officials said Monday.

    Police officials said that the Medicus clinc in Pristina, Kosovo, was secretly transformed by Dr. Lutfi Dervishi into a hub for illegal organ transplants.
    Police officials said that the Medicus clinc in Pristina, Kosovo, was secretly transformed by Dr. Lutfi Dervishi into a hub for illegal organ transplants.

    According to the indictment, the traffickers lured people from slums in Istanbul, Moscow, Moldova and Kazakhstan with promises of up to $20,000 for their organs. Law enforcement officials say many never received a cent. The operations were performed at a private clinic in a run-down neighborhood on the outskirts of Pristina, the Kosovar capital.

    While the ring was first discovered two years ago, the global scale of the network and its victims is only now becoming clear.

    Officials said the ringleader was a highly regarded surgeon and professor at Pristina University Hospital, Dr. Lutfi Dervishi. The clinic was run by his son, Arban. Also charged was Ilir Rrecaj, a senior official in Kosovo’s Health Ministry when the ring was broken. They and two others are accused of crimes including trafficking in humans and body parts, unlawful medical activity, participating in organized crime, and abuse of office. All were released on bail.

    The charges have shaken Kosovo, which has been struggling to integrate with the West since it declared independence from Serbia in February 2008. The case is also a test of the nascent legal institutions and rule of law as Kosovo seeks to overcome a culture of endemic lawlessness and corruption that has reached the highest levels of government.

    The trafficking network’s tentacles reached far. Warrants were issued for a Turkish doctor and an Israeli financier, and two other doctors, an Israeli and a Turk, were named as co-conspirators.

    The police said the ring had its roots at a medical conference in 2006 in Istanbul, where Dr. Dervishi met the Turkish doctor being sought, Yusuf Sonmez. Law enforcement officials describe Dr. Sonmez as a notorious international organ trafficker.

    The Medicus clinic had been founded by a European philanthropist who aided ethnic Albanian doctors during the war in Kosovo in 1999. Dr. Dervishi, police officials said, secretly transformed it into a hub for illegal organ transplants, which were performed by Dr. Sonmez.

    The indictment was first reported by The Associated Press. In it, a European Union prosecutor, Jonathan Ratel, said that in 2008, 20 foreign nationals living in “extreme poverty or acute financial distress” were “recruited with the false promises of payments.”

    The police said they broke the ring in November of that year, when a young Turkish man, Yilman Altun, was found at the Pristina airport, weak and frail. Mr. Altun told the police that his kidney had been stolen. When the police raided the Medicus clinic, they discovered an elderly Israeli man who had received Mr. Altun’s kidney.

    European Union officials said that the indictment in the case had been filed in district court in Kosovo and that a preliminary hearing was expected by the end of the year. If a judge confirms the charges, a trial will follow.

    The European Union has a large law enforcement mission in Kosovo to combat crime and corruption. But that fight has proved difficult, with suspicions of bribes, money laundering, organized crime, fraud and now organ trafficking, ensnaring high-level government officials.

    Several countries are examining the Kosovo ring, with police investigators combing through the phone records, computer hard drives and bank transfers of those charged. European Union officials said the recipients paid for the kidneys by bank transfers, helping lead the police to the main suspects.

    Western law enforcement officials said they suspected the ring might be part of a larger criminal network whose nexus was in Israel. In September, five doctors from South Africa were charged with participating in an international kidney-trading syndicate in which dozens of poor Brazilians and Romanians were paid for kidneys for wealthy Israelis. Analysts said the organ-trafficking case was part of a disturbing global trend in which unscrupulous traffickers take advantage of the growing waiting lists of desperate patients and the vulnerability of poor people further buffeted by the international financial crisis.

    In the United States, more than 109,000 people are on the waiting list for organ transplants, mostly kidneys, and 18 die each day, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which manages the American transplant system.

    A version of this article appeared in print on November 16, 2010, on page A4 of the New York edition.

    via 7 Charged in Kosovo-Based Organ-Trafficking Ring – NYTimes.com.