Baghdad police arrest alleged organ broker and a person planning to sell a kidney abroad

BAGHDAD — Baghdad police have arrested an alleged organ broker and a person they say was preparing to travel abroad to sell a kidney for 14 million dinars, about $9,150, the Rusafa Police Command said.

Officers acted on information that someone had made repeated visits to a passport office to get travel documents before leaving Iraq to sell a kidney, police said. A team from the 10th Security Zone and the First Sadr anti-crime department, working with intelligence units, lured and arrested that person and used the operation to catch the second suspect, described as a broker.

The broker admitted under questioning to arranging several sales of kidneys and other organs with people outside Iraq for money, and to booking travel and hotels for sellers, police said. Both are in detention and legal proceedings have begun. Police did not say where the organs were to be sold.

Iraq’s appeals courts recorded 183 human trafficking cases in August, the Supreme Judicial Council said last week, 67 of them in Basra. Recent cases have mostly involved children sold by their parents. In April the Karkh Criminal Court jailed two women for six years after one of them sold her newborn for 8 million dinars, and last September the Rusafa court jailed four people, including a father, for 10 years for selling his five-year-old daughter for the same sum. The Karkh court also jailed a mother who sold her daughter for 20 million dinars, the National Security Service arrested three women in Diwaniyah including an unlicensed midwife accused of selling newborns, and a Baghdad man was jailed for 10 years in February for selling his infant son after advertising him on social media