Surgery
Members of a surgical team implant a donated harvested kidney to transplant into patient Adam Abernathy as part of a five-way organ transplant swap in New York, August 1, 2012. Reuters

Corpses with surgical incisions and missing kidneys and other body parts were discovered in shallow mass graves in areas controlled by the Islamic State (IS). This has fueled speculation that the extremist terror group, besides beheading or burning prisoners alive, could also be engaged in human organ trafficking.

This has prompted Iraq Ambassador to the UN Mohamed Alhakim to ask on Tuesday the UN Security Council to investigate. He said there are bodies with missing organs as evidence. Alhakim asked the council to examine the corpses, reports Time.

To further support the suspicion of the IS killing people for their organs, the ambassador said that 12 doctors were killed in Mosul for not participating in the illegal trade.

The number of victims could run as high as 790, the headcount of people killed in January because of terrorism and armed conflict, according to Nikolay Mladenov, the outgoing ambassador UN ambassador to Iraq. He said that IS is possibly engaged in organ harvesting and trade to finance its jihad.

Mladenov pushed to recover the territories in Iraq and Syria seized by the IS the past 12 months – about a third of the size of the two nations where the IS established a caliphate governed by Sharia law.

Organ donation is an accepted medical practice, especially if it would be used to save lives of people. Many countries have established organ donation agencies, but most of these nations ban selling of organs, although there is a blackmarket for that in some developing countries in Asia such as the Philippines where a growing number of poor people sell their kidneys.

While some of it is voluntary on the part of the organ donor, in exchange for a fixed amount, there are also reports that some people wake up with their kidney gone after being drugged in parties or private gatherings.

However, the killing of people for their organs and using the proceeds allegedly to fund a jihad levels up the IS’s acts that continues to anger the rest of the world.

To contact the writer, email: v.hernandez@ibtimes.com.au