2024-02-01 13:57:21
Published1. February 2024, 2:57 p.m.
Morocco: Suspects of baby trafficking and blackmail for medical visits
An alleged network of 30 people, including security guards, nurses and a doctor, has been dismantled by Moroccan police.
The source did not specify the number of babies who were the subject of this trafficking.
AFP
Moroccan police arrested 30 people suspected of “trafficking in newborns” or “blackmail to benefit from public health services” in Fez, in the north of the country, the Moroccan press agency MAP announced Wednesday evening.
“Sale of newborns”
Among the suspects, arrested between Tuesday and Wednesday and placed in police custody, are 18 security agents, a doctor, two nurses, health professionals as well as intermediaries, a security source told MAP. The source did not specify the number of babies who were the subject of this trafficking.
Some of those arrested are suspected “of being intermediaries in the sale of newborns in complicity with single mothers and in return for money, in favor of families wishing to adopt abandoned children,” detailed the same source.
“Acts of blackmail”
Others would be involved “in acts of blackmail to patients and their families in exchange for appointments for consultation, diagnosis or () visits, intermediation in the practice of illegal abortions, and for issuing medical certificates containing false data”.
This vast operation, carried out by the judicial police of Fez in coordination with the General Directorate of Territorial Surveillance (DGST), also allowed the seizure in the homes of certain suspects of “medicines issued only on prescription, medicines which cannot be sold, medical equipment and sums of money.
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