Romanian authorities have carried out a European Arrest Warrant on a man and a woman suspected of forcing another man to donate a kidney in Germany for transplant purposes.<\/p>\n
Romania’s Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) said the suspects were detained in the south-western Romanian town of Caransebe\u0219 at the request of prosecutors in Munich.<\/p>\n
A spokeswoman for the Munich Public Prosecutor’s Office confirmed the arrests and said Germany would seek their extradition. A judge in Timi\u0219oara is to rule on whether the pair should be extradited to Germany.<\/p>\n
According to DIICOT, the two suspects are “leading members” of a criminal group based in Timi\u0219oara. They are under investigation for aggravated human trafficking for the purpose of organ removal. Romanian media have identified the suspects as a married couple.<\/p>\n
The male suspect suffered from severe kidney disease and needed a transplant, DIICOT said. Together with the female suspect, he allegedly coerced the victim – a Romanian national – into agreeing to donate a kidney by threatening that his parents in Romania could be killed.<\/p>\n
Investigators said the victim was held in an apartment in Munich, where the suspects allegedly confiscated his identity documents and prevented him from contacting his family.<\/p>\n
The victim was also allegedly forced to work without pay for the suspects and to sign vehicle purchase contracts on their behalf.<\/p>\n
The kidney transplant was carried out at a hospital in Germany. According to investigators, the victim falsely claimed to be the suspect’s nephew in order to proceed with the donation.<\/p>\n
Romanian investigators searched several properties owned by the alleged criminal group in nearby Timi\u0219oara in March. Authorities also carried out searches in Munich.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Romanian authorities have carried out a European Arrest Warrant on a man and a woman suspected of forcing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58631,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[45849,5,45848,1297,6375,45850],"class_list":["post-58630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-diicot","tag-germany","tag-kidney-donation","tag-munich","tag-romania","tag-romanian-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}