Poland arrests woman who sold 56 human kidneys
Ukrainian suspect had been convicted in Kazakhstan and was wanted on Interpol red notice.
WARSAW – Polish border guards have detained a Ukrainian woman who was sentenced in Kazakhstan to 12 years in prison for her role in an organ-trading gang and selling 56 kidneys, including some from Thailand, prosecutors said on Tuesday.
The 35-year-old woman, referred to only as Ksenia P under Polish privacy laws, was detained at a railway crossing between Poland and Ukraine under an Interpol red notice, Marta Petkowska, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office in Przemysl, said in a statement.
The prosecutors didn’t say why the woman was not in prison in Kazakhstan at the time she was detained or when she was convicted.
She has been wanted by Interpol since November 2020, prosecutors said. A red notice is a request to global law enforcement to provisionally arrest a person pending extradition or similar legal action.
The woman was convicted for participation in an international organised criminal group that illegally collected tissues and organs from people from 2017 to 2019 and sold them on the black market, Petkowska added.
The prosecution submitted a motion to a court to apply one week’s temporary arrest so that she could be extradited to Kazakhstan.
