The killing cost of a pound of f lesh
With a long waiting list for available organs, wealthy patients are spending a fortune on illicit transplants, writes Julie Bindel. But it is the desperate ‘donors’ who pay the ultimate price
ONE January night in 2004, Susan Sutovic was woken by a persistently ringing phone. “It was an international call from Belgrade,” she said, “telling me my son was dead.”
Petar Sutovic, 24, was, at the time of his death, studying law in Belgrade. His body was allegedly discovered in his bed late at night by his flatmate. Although no death certificate has ever been issued, the pathologist who authorised the release of Petar’s body to be flown home to the UK said the cause of death was a drugs overdose.
“Paramedics claimed that a needle was found protruding from his arm,” said Sutovic, “but my son was not an addict.”
Almost a decade later, neither a toxicology nor postmortem report from Serbia has ever been seen by the UK authorities. The death scene, Sutovic insists, was “staged”.
In the UK, a second postmortem examination of Petar’s body was undertaken. The pathologist noted that the heart and pancreas were absent, “no injuries were seen” and that “death was associated with a potentially fatal blood level of morphine”.
When she viewed her son’s body upon his return to the UK, Sutovic noticed a number of facial and other injuries that had not previously been recorded. She began to form her own theories about what had happened to her son: in her opinion, he was the victim of organ traffickers.
“My son was murdered, but the Serbian and British authorities have put me through hell, forcing me to uncover the truth and blocking me all the way,” said Sutovic when we met in her West London home.
“I do not want the 10th anniversary of Petar’s death to pass before I have laid him properly to rest.”
Sutovic’s belief is that Petar was killed to “get at me” by people who then realised they could sell his heart for a fortune, or perhaps the hit man was paid with the organs.
It would be easy to dismiss Sutovic as grief-crazed, desperate to refute claims that her son was a heroin addict who died as a result of his own actions. Except there is compelling evidence, accepted by human rights organisation Amnesty International, several forensic and medical experts, former senior police officers and, more recently, the Serbian judiciary, that Petar’s death was suspicious.
Prior to these tragic events, Sutovic was a prominent human rights lawyer. Working in the UK, she had gained a reputation for supporting those who had opposed the government of former president Slobodan Milosevic. She had many dangerous enemies. So, in July 2004, after repeated prevarications by both the UK and Serbian authorities, Sutovic decided to go to Belgrade herself with two private detectives.
The detectives examined the apartment in which Petar died and found blood in the bedroom, hall, bathroom and kitchen, suggesting there had been a violent struggle.
This conclusion was lent extra weight when Sutovic finally saw the photographs taken by police on the night Petar died, which showed his face badly beaten and his bed soaked in blood.
Subsequent tests revealed that the morphine in his blood was not the type produced by heroin, but the type
Whoever killed Petar beat him up, changed his clothes and took his heart to sell on the black market
associated with a prescription painkiller, Tramadol, which Petar had been using since a road accident in 2000. Sutovic believes that whoever killed Petar beat him up, changed his clothes, rearranged the room to make it look like he had taken an overdose and then, at some point, took his heart to sell on the black market.
Chain-smoking, Sutovic pushed the police photographs of Petar towards me. “Could you believe what they did to me, that the pathologist said there were no injuries? There’s blood everywhere, his nose is badly broken and split at the bridge, there are blood bubbles in the corner of his mouth that suggest he was still alive when the photograph was taken.”
Last year, the first case of illegal organ harvesting in the UK was unveiled by the Salvation Army, which provides support to victims of human trafficking. In a report, the organisation said a criminal gang had brought an unnamed woman into the country with the intention of removing her organs and selling them to patients desperate for a transplant. It was unclear from the report whether the plot was uncovered before the organ removal took place, but the signs are clear — international organ trafficking is a growing trade.
The growth is down to two factors. First, a reduction in the number of legitimate organs available for transplant — owing, in part, to seat-belt legislation that has cut the number of healthy young adults dying prematurely in traffic accidents.
And, second, an increase in the number of people waiting for transplants, which have become more routine in recent years.
It is now possible to order an organ on the internet. It is also possible, if you are poor, desperate and willing to part with, say, a kidney, to broker a deal with traffickers. Recent research by the World Health Organisation (WHO) found that traffickers illegally obtained 7 000 kidneys each year around the world.
Organ trafficking operates in various ways. Victims can be kidnapped and forced to give up an organ. Some, out of financial desperation, agree to sell an organ, or they are duped into believing they need an operation and the organ is removed without their knowledge. Some victims are murdered to order if a large sum has been paid in advance. This is what Sutovic thinks happened to her son.
This illegal trade has risen to such a level that an estimated 10 000 blackmarket operations involving purchased human organs now take place annually — more than one every hour — according to WHO. It estimates that organ trafficking accounts for 5% to 10% of all kidney transplants worldwide.
Children, especially those from poor backgrounds or those with disabilities, are often targeted. In May this year, an eight-year-old British schoolgirl died at a clinic in India, and her family suspect she was murdered by medics intent on harvesting her organs. Gurkiren Kaur Loyal’s parents took her to see a doctor in the Punjab when she began suffering from dehydration, and within seconds of receiving an injection she collapsed and died.
During the postmortem, Gurkiren’s organs were removed and have not been returned. The Birmingham coroner told the family that, without the organs or the Indian postmortem report, he was unable to record a cause of death.
Last month, in the former Yugoslav republic of Kosovo, five men were convicted of involvement in a ring that performed at least 24 illegal kidney transplants at the Medicus clinic on the outskirts of the capital, Pristina. Lutfi Dervishi, the clinic’s director, and his son, Arban, were sentenced to eight and seven years respectively.
They had promised donor victims about £12 500 (R200 000) each for kidneys that were then sold on the black market for as much as £84 000 a time. But donors had often gone unpaid and, in the words of the lead prosecutor, Jonathan Ratel, were “literally cast aside at the airport”.
The case came to light in late 2008 when a young Turkish man, Yilmaz Altun, collapsed at Pristina airport before boarding a flight to Istanbul. Doctors discovered a fresh wound on his abdomen and he admitted that he
Seat-belt legislation has cut the number of healthy young adults dying prematurely in traffic accidents
had struck a deal with the clinic to have his left kidney removed. When police arrived at Medicus, they found an elderly Israeli man on his way to the operating theatre to receive Altun’s kidney. Most of the organs harvested by Medicus had been sold to recipients in Israel, Canada, Poland and Germany.
Eulex, Europe’s rule-of-law mission to Kosovo that brought the case, is now investigating whether government figures were involved. Nato documents leaked in 2011 claimed that Kosovo’s prime minister, Hashim Thaçi, was the head of a “mafia-like” network responsible for organ trafficking and other criminal activities.
Prices vary, but a heart can fetch up to £1-million. And body parts are not only used for transplants — there is a demand for the illicit experimentation on whole cadavers by unethical scientists, as well as a market in hip and knee replacements. Penises and foetuses have been used in black magic rituals.
In the UK, it is illegal to sell an organ, although some desperate folk have been tempted. (With at least a million people worldwide waiting for a kidney transplant at any given time, the demand is unquestionably out there.)
One man attempted to sell his kidney on eBay, only to have it pulled by the site — but not before the price reached $5 750 (about R58 000).
And, in 2011, Nicky Johnson, 24, from Stockport, placed an advert on a Russian website offering to donate a kidney “if the money was right”. One of more than a dozen Brits on the site, Johnson said he would travel abroad for surgery. The operation takes up to three hours and requires a two-day stay in hospital. Postoperative infection is a serious risk.
In one of the most tragic cases to come to light, a disabled single mother in Spain was found attempting to auction off one of her kidneys, corneas, a lung and a piece of her liver online because she could not afford her monthly rent and was facing eviction.
The inquest into Petar’s death opened in London in 2004. An open verdict was recorded after concluding he had died from an overdose of morphine. “It was the wrong result and not based on the evidence available,” said his mother.
After a two-year campaign, Sutovic was granted a second inquest, which she hoped would return a verdict of unlawful killing. But the inquest never happened, because legal arguments ensued about whether it was necessary to exhume Petar’s body.
Today, Sutovic continues her fight for justice and has instructed Belgrade-based lawyer Djuro Cepic to represent her. Cepic told me he was hopeful that the truth would soon emerge and that the Serbian High Court had just granted his request to open a full investigation.
I asked Sutovic what it is she hoped for. “I can’t bring my son back, but he has a right to a soul, to rest in peace. How can either of us rest until we find out exactly what happened on that night?” — © The Sunday Telegraph, London