Afghan girl’s gruesome murder sparks investigation into possible organ harvesting ring
KABUL, Afghanistan – The chilling, cold-blooded killing of a 10-year-old Afghan girl has sparked an investigation into a possible organ harvesting or snuff filmmaking ring.
The tragic death of the girl, Henna, occurred more than a month after her family applied for Special Immigrant Visas to leave the Taliban-controlled country – but according to her grief-stricken relatives, her family has not heard back from the US government.
In the early hours of a Friday morning earlier this month – the only weekend day in Afghanistan – the girl was allegedly targeted by her neighbor to “do them a favor” and buy them bread, her relatives said. The neighbor, Mohammad, allegedly claimed to have had a heart condition and told the neighbors he did not want the women of the house roaming the streets under the Taliban’s gaze.
“The women were relentless,” the sobbing grandmother, Parveen, recalls. “They made Henna get out of bed, and that is how they got her.”
But when Henna went to deliver the bread, her family says, she was “abducted” and murdered. Five adults inside the neighboring home — suspected ringleaders Mohammad, 67, and his son Ahmad, 26, as well as three women — were arrested and remain behind bars.
The true motivation for the killing may never be known. But both her family and the Taliban suspect a broader, more sinister kidnapping ring has been unearthed. The two men of the house had already been taken in for questioning a week earlier, Taliban police say, on suspicions of child abductions and organ harvesting – and the property was under surveillance when the grim homicide took place.
Henna was apparently suffocated and the side of her neck was severed, and she sustained multiple stab wounds around her abdominal region, as evidenced by pictures of her wounds.
“They tied a scarf around her neck, and then there were at least seven or eight knives to the stomach, possibly trying to remove the organ,” said Taliban Police Commander Mawalwi Tayeb, Head of the Criminal Investigation Department.
As per Islamic custom, she was buried immediately before a proper autopsy and investigation could be conducted.
Yet Tayeb also notes that they are probing the possibility that the “mafia” could also be motivated financially by making “black films” – usually referred to in the west as snuff films – showing the brutal death, which are then disturbingly sold to twisted minds over the internet.
“These cases generally have two purposes. One is to take body parts, usually the kidneys, and the second is to make black films,” he says. “We have not seen a film so far, but it seems they were targeting her to remove body parts to sell.”
Taliban police forces believe the suspects have been kidnapping and killing people for around five years, continuously moving from province to province to avoid capture.
The organ harvesting trade has become something of an underground business in Afghanistan in recent years amid a lawless environment, rife with corruption and the majority of resources devoted to the war effort. Impoverished Afghans have also volunteered to surrender one of two kidneys for a quick financial boost, often leaving them too weak to work and deepening their financial burden.
Dr. Dil Aqa Mahboby, Kabul’s Deputy Head of the Forensic Department, is skeptical that the alleged ring has such capabilities as organ harvesting, believing it was likely a revenge murder – or a kidnapping gone wrong – as no body part was extracted.
“If a person dies, there is no part of the body that works at all. When a human dies, everything dies. If they were planning to do an organ transplant, they would have kept the child alive and cut from the center of the chest and put into cold storage,” he explains. “This could be a kidnapping for either money or because (the child) knew some secrets.”
Full article: https://nypost.com/2021/10/18/afghan-girls-murder-sparks-investigation-into-possible-organ-harvesting-ring/