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<font size=4><b>Israel opens organ theft hearing <br><br>
</b></font><font size=3>Wednesday, December 23, 2009 <br>
<b>
<a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/12/2009122315425789179.html" eudora="autourl">
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/12/2009122315425789179.html<br>
<br>
</a></b>Israel's parliament has begun hearings on the theft of human
organs from Palestinians, Israelis and foreign workers without their
relatives' permission.<br><br>
Israeli health officials testified on Wednesday that Israeli authorities
harvested organs from the dead bodies of Israelis and Palestinians in the
1990s for transplant purposes.<br><br>
The testimony came three days after the government admitted to the
practice, following previous denials.<br><br>
Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros, reporting from Jerusalem, said Wednesday's
hearing was not the first time Israeli officials have had to face
difficult questions in parliament about the organ theft issue.<br><br>
"What we tended to see in the past was officials trying to skirt
around the issue, really not wanting to confirm or deny that organ theft
took place," she said.<br><br>
"What we had on Wednesday was a very public admission by an Israeli
official that organ theft was in fact taking place.<br><br>
"But the health ministry said it was a practice that happened in the
past and is no longer a problem."<br><br>
<b>Practice 'continuing'<br><br>
</b>However, Ahmed Tibi, an Israeli Palestinian member of parliament,
told the assembly on Wednesday that he had evidence that organ theft was
still taking place.<br><br>
"You said that it was ended in the '90s. But Fadul Ordul Shaheen who
was from Gaza passed away. He died of diabetes this year. When his
body was given back to his family, his eyes were bleeding and there was a
deep cut through his body," he said.<br><br>
"The family is saying that both the corneas and the kidneys were
taken. <br><br>
"I am asking you if you're willing to look into this complaint and
see if this activity is continuing, if organs are being harvested from
Palestinian prisoners."<br><br>
Yaacov Litzman, the Israeli deputy health minister, said he would
investigate the case "with all seriousness" to determine if any
wrongdoing was committed.<br><br>
Tibi later told Al Jazeera that he would continue to pursue the health
ministry for answers for the families of those who were
affected.<br><br>
<b>'Highly informal'<br><br>
</b>The government's admission this week followed the release of an
interview with Jehuda Huss, the former head of Israel's forensic
institute, in which he said that workers at the institute had harvested
skin, corneas, heart valves and bones from Israelis, Palestinians and
foreign workers.<br><br>
In the interview, which was conducted in 2000 when Hiss was head of Tel
Aviv's Abu Kabir forensic institute, he said: "We started to harvest
corneas ... Whatever was done was highly informal. No permission was
asked from the family."<br><br>
Nancy Scheper-Hughes, who conducted the interview, said that she made the
article public because of the controversy last summer over allegations of
organ harvesting made by a Swedish newspaper.<br><br>
In August the Aftonbladet newspaper ran an article alleging that the
Israeli army had stolen body organs from Palestinian men after killing
them.<br><br>
Israel denied the claims, calling them anti-Semitic, and the incident
raised tensions when Sweden refused to apologize for the article, saying
that press freedom prevented it from intervening.<br><br>
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