Organ trade claim nun murdered

2004-03-02 09:31

MAPUTO - Six people have been arrested over the murder of a Brazilian nun in northern Mozambique, where missionaries have received death threats since alleging an organ trafficking network is operating in the area, the country's chief prosecutor said.

"At least six people have been detained following the missionary's death and we believe investigators will now be able to discover the motive for the crime," Attorney General Joaquim Madeira told journsalists.

The body of 53-year-old Doraci Edinger was found in front of her home in Nampula, the country's third largest city, where four Roman Catholic nuns have received death threats.

Madeira declined comment on a possible link between the missionary's death and the alleged organ trafficking ring, saying: "Let the investigators do their work first."

He said there was strong evidence of child trafficking in Mozambique.

"We are working with about six children who are said to have escaped from their abductors after going missing for weeks or months," he said.

Madeira said one of the children has already been heard but declined to comment on what had been said.

Edinger, a member of the Evangelical Lutheran church, had been in the former Portuguese colony of Mozambique since 1998.

Four Catholic missionary nuns living in the same town told Portuguese radio TSF on February 26 they had recently had a narrow escape from an armed ambush after presenting what they said was evidence that local children were being killed so that their organs could be sold.

The four nuns told a Spanish newspaper earlier this month that they had gathered testimony from would-be victims of the network who had managed to escape and had photographs of dead children with missing organs.

They said there had also been several attempts to abduct children from the orphanage they run in Nampula.

But Mozambique's assistant attorney general, Rafael Sebastiao, said a preliminary investigation into the allegations had found no evidence that human organs had been removed from bodies and sold.

He said a team of forensic specialists had spent two weeks in the area and examined 14 cases of violent death or disappearances allegedly linked with the sale of organs but had concluded they were not the work of an organ trafficking network.

But the nuns accuse officials of a cover-up.

The Mozambican Human Rights League has also made allegations of organ trafficking.

- SAPA