ISRAELI ORGAN TRAFFICKING: Two Haifa men sentenced to jail for organ trafficking

Prof. Yehuda Hiss, the director of the Institute of Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir was under police investigation in 2002 for removing organs from deceased persons without familial consent. He was dismissed by the Health Ministry for a while until Hiss agreed to a plea bargain. He admitted to being involved in the removal of body parts from 125 bodies and was reprimanded for this.

The stories about Palestinian Intifada dead arriving home with organs removed began soon after the outbreak of the Intifada in 1987. Palestinian pathologist Dr Hatem Abu Ghazaleh said there were many credible reports about this.
Roughly at the same time there was a flurry of news about successful transplants. It scared many people. And now we have the revelations about an organ traficking network with brokers in the USA, Turkey, Brazil and South Africa. The don of the whole operation is one Ilan Peri in Israel. Whether it is a matter of perception or fact, the question of organ theft should be addressed.

Ref: Haaretz comment

Two Haifa men sentenced to jail for organ trafficking

In a precedent-setting ruling yesterday the Haifa District Court yesterday sentenced two Haifa men to jail for trafficking in humans for the purpose of harvesting their organs.

John Allan (formerly Mohammad Gheit), 59, was sentenced to four years in jail with a three-year suspended sentence. Allan was also ordered to pay each of his six victims NIS 15,000. Hassan Zakhalka, 32, was sentenced to 20 months in prison and 12 months suspended sentence for aiding and abetting human trafficking for the harvest of organs.
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This is the first time an Israeli court has issued a conviction for this offense, based on a law passed at the end of last year.

The pair confessed to the charges against them in a plea bargain with the prosecution.

Allan and Zakhalka admitted that at the end of 2006, they persuaded Arabs from the Galilee and central Israel who were developmentally challenged or mentally ill to agree to have a kidney removed for payment. They located their victims by placing ads in the newspaper offering money for organ donation. According to the indictment, the pair gave false information to the donors, and also pressured and threatened them to give up their kidney. After the surgery, Allan and Zakhalka did not pay the donors as promised.

One of the victims was an illiterate 32-year-old single mother from an Arab village in central Israel. The pair told her she would undergo a simple operation, and she would be back on her feet in two days. At one point, the woman changed her mind, and in response Allan and Zakhalka threatened to report her to the police, telling her it was a crime to agree to donate a kidney. Like the other victims, the woman was flown to Ukraine where she underwent the surgery. When she returned home, the victims refused to pay her the $7,000 they had promised her.

Allan and Zakhalka were part of a criminal ring that included an Israeli surgeon, Dr. Michael Zis, who also worked at Assaf Harofeh Medical Center. According to the indictment, Zis sold the kidneys he harvested for between $125,000 and $135,000, of which Allan received $10,000 dollars. The State Prosecutor’s Office is preparing an extradition order against Zis, who is being held in prison in Ukraine.

The conviction of Allan and Zakhalka was made possible by an amendment to the criminal code that was passed in October 2006, which added a number of clauses prohibiting trafficking in humans for the purpose of harvesting organs. Judges Josef Elron, Ron Sokol and Menahem Raniel decided to accept the plea bargain because they said clear legal interpretation had not yet been formulated with regard to the crime of human trafficking for the purpose of harvesting organs, Lacking such clear interpretation of the clause, they said, “the parties might be dragged into presenting much complex evidence.”

Ref. Haaretz

Also read… Israel-Ukraine Organ Trafficking Ring, Romania probes Israeli adoption agency link in organ trafficking and Israeli suspected of organ trafficking