Milestone as organ traffickers jailed for first time on mainland

Seven traffickers in human organs were jailed yesterday by a court in Beijing. It is the first time anyone on the mainland has been punished for a practice often ignored by authorities.

The sentences ranged from two years to seven years eight months. The Haidian District People's Court also fined the traffickers, involved in three different cases, between 50,000 yuan (HK$57,500) and 200,000 yuan. None of the seven expressed an intention to appeal.

According to court records, they were convicted of trafficking one to five organs each, being paid 100,000 to 580,000 yuan by patients' families.

Prosecutor Qiu Zhiying from the district procuratorate said the traffickers were charged with 'illegal business operations' because the nation's criminal law had no provision for organ trafficking. He said the lack of legislation caused certain difficulties in identifying evidence and determining the nature of the crime.

Qiu told the Beijing Evening News the three trafficking cases were the first of their kind in the country, so there were no precedents to follow.

The father of a patient who received a kidney transplant wrote a mitigation letter to the court, saying the organ traffickers were actually saving his child's life when the country lacked a proper organ donation system and had tens of thousands of patients needing organ transplants to survive.