Militants now sell internal organs of hostages for funds

oge okonkwo

December 22, 2014 11:46 PM

It was revealed that ISIS has been recruiting foreign doctors for months to harvest internal organs from bodies of living hostages and their own dead soldiers

Recent claims say that the Islamic state ISIS has turned to organ trafficking to fund terror across the middle east.

Sources say the terror group until now filled its $2million-a-year war chest from a variety of shadowy sources including oil production, human trafficking and drug smuggling.

It was revealed that ISIS has been recruiting foreign doctors for months to harvest internal organs from bodies of living hostages and their own dead soldiers.

Hostages also includes children snatched from minority communities in Iraq and Syria.

The news was revealed in a report by al-Monitor news website, citing an Iraqi ear, nose and throat doctor named Siruwan al-Mosuli.

He told the site that "IS commanders have hired foreign doctors to run an extensive organ trafficking system from a hospital in the captured city of Mosul, northern Iraq, that is already beginning to generate huge profits."

The terror organisation has reportedly set up an organ-smuggling division with sole responsibility of selling human hearts, livers and kidneys on the lucrative international black market, reports claim.

'[Al-Mosuli] said that lately he noticed unusual movement within medical facilities in Mosul Arab and foreign surgeons were hired, but prohibited from mixing with local doctors,' the author wrote. 'Information then leaked about organ selling.'

The report went on: 'Surgeries take place within a hospital and organs are quickly transported through networks specialized in trafficking human organs. Mosuli said that the organs come from fallen fighters who were quickly transported to the hospital, injured people who were abandoned or individuals who were kidnapped.'

'Most of the organs are then smuggled out of Syria and Iraq into neighboring countries like Saudi Arabia or Turkey where criminal gangs sell them on to shady buyers across the globe', the Assyrian International News Agency reported.

While organ harvesting may be the most shocking of IS' revenue streams, the report highlights a string of others that contribute to the group's $2million annual income.

oge okonkwo