Writing for the UK Daily Mail, John Hall reports that the Iraqi government has made a formal appeal to the United Nations to investigate reports that ISIS (or Islamic State) terror group is harvesting organs from terror victims for the black market it fund its’ activities.
Iraqi ambassador Mohamed Alhakim claimed that dozens of bodies have been found in the Mosul – an ISIS stronghold – baring surgical incisions and missing body parts indicates that,
“ISIS has set up a specialist organ-smuggling division whose sole responsibility is to sell human hearts, livers and kidneys on the lucrative international black market”.
The black market trade in human organs by ISIS was first reported last December but has taken on new urgency in recent weeks with news that ISIS had begun to execute doctors for refusing to harvest body parts.
The black market in human organs is the latest “profit center” developed by ISIS to meet its’ $2 million a day payroll and other costs of doing business. Also included in the mix are oil sales, ransoms from kidnapping, protection rackets, human trafficking, drug smuggling and the sale of art and antiquities looted from museums and cultural centers in occupied territories.
Mr. Alhakim told the UN Security Council that ISIS was also engaging in “crimes of genocide” by targeting certain ethnic groups and religious factions for brutal treatment – acts that also serve as recruiting tools for radicals looking for a big payday.
ISIS Sunni militants control about a third of both Iraq and neighboring Syria. When a village, town or city is captured ISIS immediately imposes their extreme interpretation of Sharia law on the population – law they strictly enforce through rape, beheadings, burnings and the killing of children that are videotaped with high production values for release on the Internet.
To drive home this point, ISIS executed 13 teenage boys in mid-January for the crime of watching a soccer game between Iraq and Jordan on television.
Black markets only work if there are customers
A separate report that ran on the BBC said that ISIS militants in Syria were making millions of (dollars) “selling ancient statues and mosaics to wealthy Westerners using a complex system of smugglers and middlemen.
“Looted from ancient buildings in ISIS strongholds, such as the group’s de facto capital city Raqqa, the antiquities are up to 10,000-years-old and can exchange hands for more than $1 million each. The most expensive items are covertly smuggled overseas – usually on the orders of wealthy Europeans…
“…ISIS militants charge smugglers 20 per cent on the sale of ancient items found or looted in territory under its control. If the smugglers decide not to buy the items, they are promptly smashed to pieces as examples of idolatry, regardless of their historic significance.”
ISIS terrorists also boast that they have cornered the market on heroin making its way into the Europeans Union and the Russian Federation.
