Child-trafficking Fears As Guatemalan Police Rescue 46 From House

Police in Guatemala have rescued 46 children from a suspected illegal adoption agency, renewing concerns about the trafficking of infants from the central American country. The children, aged from just a few days old to three years, were discovered at the weekend at a house in the city of Antigua, near the capital.

"We searched the house after we got a tip from neighbours telling us that every day they would see foreigners pick up children there," a police spokesman, Carlos Calju, told reporters.

Two lawyers at the house were arrested on suspicion of assisting with illegal adoptions. A police investigation will try to determine if the children were kidnapped or obtained from their mothers through coercion. Most of them lacked proper documentation for being in the custody of adults other than their parents.

Guatemala, in many places violent and lawless, has become notorious for illegal and unethical adoption networks which supply children to western couples.

Antigua is a popular city for such transactions. A world heritage site and tourist magnet, it has plenty of amenities for those who go there to negotiate for a baby.

Last year US couples adopted more than 4,135 babies from Guatemala, second only to China, under a legal but loosely regulated system. The number of illegal adoptions was not known.

A spate of scandals, including stories of gangs which rove the countryside stealing babies or, in other cases, bribing impoverished mothers, has prompted an outcry in Guatemala and the US.

Efforts to tighten the system are underway. Last week the US embassy in Guatemala City started requiring two DNA tests before granting a visa to adopted infants to ensure the women giving them up for adoption were the real birth mothers.

In March the US state department said it no longer recommended the country as a source of adoptions, citing numerous cases of fraud and extortion. Mothers, often teenagers with little education or money, have been pressured to sell their babies. Would-be adopters are also targeted, often being charged more than £10,000 in "fees", of which only a small fraction goes to the birth mother.

Under Guatemalan law, unregulated notaries act as baby brokers who recruit birth mothers, handle all the paperwork and complete adoptions in less than half the time it can take in other countries.

In May Guatemala ratified the Hague convention on intercountry adoption, an international treaty requiring government agencies to regulate adoptions to ensure babies have not been bought or stolen.

In some rural areas the trade has created a climate of fear and suspicion towards foreigners, with villagers wary of children being bought or kidnapped for adoptions or even organ harvesting.

In June a mob in Camotan beat a woman to death and set another fire on suspicion that they had killed and dismembered a young girl for her heart and kidneys.