User:Yamanam/2009 Israel organ controversy

The Abu Kabir organ harvesting scandal involves a controversy surrounding reports that improper organ harvesting occurred at the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute, located in Tel Aviv, over a period of several years centered around the 1990s. Following a series of controversial allegations that the organs of dead Palestinians had been taken without the families' consent in the 1980s and 1990s, an interview of the former director of the institute was made public in December 2009 in which he acknowledged that organs had been taken from Israeli soldiers, Israeli citizens, Palestinians and foreign worker, in many cases without notifying the families or obtaining their permission. This acknowledgment was subsequently validated by a number of Israeli officials.

The story emerged in an interview with Dr Yehuda Hiss, conducted by Nancy Scheper-Hughes, former head of the Abu Kabir forensic institute near Tel Aviv. The interview was conducted in 2000 and released in 2009 because of the row between Israel and Sweden over a report in the Stockholm newspaper Aftonbladet.

Israel's Channel 2 TV reported that in the 1990s, specialists at Abu Kabir harvested skin, corneas, heart valves and bones from the bodies of Israeli soldiers, Israeli citizens, Palestinians and foreign workers, often without permission from relatives

Incriminating

Ahmed Teibi, a member of the israeli Knesset and head of the Arab nationalist Party, insists that the new evidence incriminates the israeli army and government.

Reactions

• Iran Iranian newspaper Kayhan quoted Arab reporter Kusar Aslam as saying that "Since the early 1970s the Israelis have snatched thousands of Palestinian bodies from hospitals in the territories and transferred them to the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute".