Doctors 'plotted to Kill Man for Organs'

Four Moscow doctors have been arrested for plotting to murder a patient so that they could use his organs for transplantation in an illegal trade which Russians fear is rife but which is seldom brought to court.

Two doctors at the Moscow city hospital No 20 and two in the city's transplantation service were arrested yesterday after a scandal which halted transplants throughout the country.

The case began when an informant told the police early last year that she had arrived at the hospital to find her friend had been "cut open" for the organs after an accident, the Russian media reported.

The victim's family pushed the police to investigate, and they began a surveillance of transplants in the Moscow hospitals.

On April 11 last year a man of 51 with serious head injuries, identified in police documents as A Orekhov, was taken to Hospital 20. A prosecutor's statement said: "The patient was listed in critical condition, which is why information about a possible donor was sent to the Moscow coordination centre for organ donation."

Alerted by the surveillance, the police rushed to the hospital with two of their own doctors and found Mr Orekhov on the operating table.

Prosecutors said they found his body prepared for kidney removal.

His hands were tied behind his head and his belly was covered in green antiseptic, was reported.

The theatre lamp was on and the surgical implements ready, but the officers found that his heart was still beating and he was technically alive. They tried to revive him, but he died of his injuries.

Russian law requires the patient to be "biologically dead" before the organs can be extracted, and a declaration signed by the intensive care doctor in charge of the patient and a police doctor before a transplant can be performed.

The investigators allegedly found no such document.

The four people arrested yesterday were Irina Litsman, deputy head of intensive care at Hospital 20, Lyubov Pravdenko, a doctor there, and the transplant surgeons at the donor centre, Pyotr Pyatnichuk and Bairm Shagdurov.

Dr Litsman has also been charged with abuse of office.

The illicit trade in human organs is a problem throughout the former Soviet Union, where young men in impoverished states such as Moldova sell their kidneys to foreigners who are willing to pay up to $250,000.

According to one case studied by European officials, the donor can be paid as little as $5,000.

The incident at Hospital 20 finally broke the silence about the trade and prompted a widespread investigation of hospital practices.

A moratorium on transplants declared after the incident lasted for months, causing an outcry from the sick and transplant surgeons.