Police in the southeastern Nigerian state of Imo are investigating a possible organ-harvesting ring after finding a hideous trove of mutilated corpses at a hotel.
The Imo horror is an especially grim example of Nigeria’s kidnapping epidemic, in which every sort of malevolent group — from Islamic State jihadis to huge bandit gangs and small groups of petty criminals — kidnaps vulnerable people. Sometimes the kidnappers hold their victims for ransom and murder them if the ransom is not paid. In other cases, the abductors are looking for child brides.
In Imo, it appears a kidnapping ring was carving up its victims to harvest their organs. State police said on Monday that during their “ongoing war against kidnapping,” they tracked an unnamed suspect to an illegal mortuary and nearby hotel that he owned.
“At the mortuary, decomposed and mutilated dead bodies were discovered in unhygienic conditions, raising suspicions of illegal organ-harvesting activities,” said a police spokesman.
According to the UK Daily Mail, over a hundred bodies were found at the “organ-harvesting slaughterhouse.” Both the hotel and mortuary were sealed by police while forensic teams examined the scene.
Nigeria’s Punch newspaper reported on Monday that the organ-harvesting investigation was related to the “intensive manhunt for armed men who attacked motorists and abducted passengers” in a nearby community.
Police responded in force after a group of armed men ambushed two vehicles, fatally shooting the driver of one and kidnapping the passengers in the other. Security teams were said to be “bush-combing, search-and-rescue, and suspect-tracking within the Amala forest axis and surrounding communities.”
The implication behind linking these two stories is that the carjacking gang has been kidnapping travelers and taking them to the “illegal mortuary” for their organs to be harvested. The police have yet to identify any of the perpetrators involved in the vehicle ambush, but they named the suspect wanted in connection with the mortuary as Stanley Morocco Oparaugo.
Hellbound and Down 