A charity worker and ‘evil child trader’ has been detained in Ukraine after he was caught red-handed seeking to take an 11-month-old baby abroad to ‘sell for organ transplants’.
The man, 43, had allegedly given a $1,000 downpayment to the boy’s mother, claiming he would ensure the boy was adopted in the EU to live in safety away from the war.
He offered the woman, from Zhytomyr, a total of $5,000 for the baby who he then intended to sell to traffickers for $25,000.
There have been repeated warnings in recent years of children from impoverished eastern Europe exported on the black market by gangs linked to organ transplants for wealthy clients, especially in the Middle East.Charity workers on the Polish-Ukrainian border have warned that the traffickers are working alone and in gangs to kidnap the women and children who are an ‘easy target’. ‘We’re also seeing multiple couples, typically a male and a female, having travelled to the border by car, attempting to lure women using similar tactics. We intervene in such cases by approaching the person acting suspiciously and asking them to register in our volunteer directory – in response to which they typically run away.’Missing Children Europe told the Guardian in the early weeks of the Ukraine war that unaccompanied minors were continuing to disappear at the borders.