Where there is war, there is profit.
And Yemen - an already poor country
that's been torn apart by five years of war -
is no exception.
But even before the war
Yemen was the poorest country in the Middle East
with half the population living below the poverty line
barely able to afford food and shelter.
In order to survive
some Yemenis were forced to sell everything they had
even their organs.
But this was no straightforward sale between two parties.
There were surprising players involved who were
and might still be, making a huge profit.
I was working on a farm when I went to Sanaa to see a friend.
He asked me if I'd be willing to go to Cairo
since I was doing so well, so I said yes right away.
Next thing I knew, they had made me a passport
and I was going to Cairo.
They said I'd be getting $5000
so I went with it.
$5000.
That's how much this donor got paid
for his kidney when he sold it back in 2014.
And even though the country wasn't yet in a full-scale civil war
that money could save lives.
I donated a kidney.
I was with my brother-in-law, and he told me we should do it.
We were out of work, and we had families to support.
So, we reached out to a broker and he reached out to them.
And Yemeni brokers could do a good job of selling the procedure
because most of them started out as donors.
I started off as a donor.
I was in jail for owing people money when
I met a gang that gave me the number of a broker
who I contacted when I got out.
He asked for my passport number
and three days later, he told me to go
pick up my ticket from the EgyptAir office and travel.
Our broker wasn't a match to any of the ring's clients
so he was asked to be a middleman instead.
According to him, most successful donors
would go back to Yemen to enlist more donors
making a commission on every person they recruit.
And they were able to enlist a lot of donors because
they could sell the procedure as profitable
discreet and harmless
thanks to the faint scars that the surgery leaves. discreet and harmless
thanks to the faint scars that the surgery leaves.
A laparoscopic resection is done
and leaves no visible marks.
Just because the surgery is simple
doesn't mean the danger was over once it was done.
Normally, an organ donor is monitored by the hospital
for a month after surgery
but these donors were sent back to Yemen
as soon as possible.
They didn't give me time to recover.
I lost everything
and I'm still facing complications to this day.
I'm grateful to God for being here
but I can't carry anything that might be too heavy.
These kinds of postoperative complications
made them unable to do the labour-intensive work
they relied on to feed their families
and left them even less capable of providing
than they were before the surgery.
The donors didn't know about these after-effects
and the brokers
in trying to make a commission
weren't likely to tell them.
With our limited means, we verified 1,000 cases
but there are over 10,000 cases.
Of the 1,000 we interviewed
900 had sold their kidneys Of the 1,000 we interviewed
900 had sold their kidneys
and come back to Yemen as brokers 900 had sold their kidneys
and come back to Yemen as brokers
looking to find new victims.
While the network spread in Yemen
it's home base was Egypt.
It's become the hub of organ trafficking in the Middle East
one of five major centres in the world.
It's a highly profitable industry
believed to make between
$840 million and $1.7 billion a year worldwide.
Here, crooked doctors, brokers
hospitals, and embassy officials would coordinate
to make potential millions off the misery
of people while paying them a lot less.
We managed to find an Egyptian broker in this network
to tell us about how he got started.
I started this work around 4 years ago.
I did it because my younger brother was sick
and after running some tests
we found out he had problems with his kidneys
and he'd have to have a transplant.
So a broker put us in touch with someone Yemeni
who told me he could donate his kidney.
After the operation, he went back home
and we stayed in touch. After the operation, he went back home
and we stayed in touch.
We kept talking and he started telling me and we stayed in touch.
We kept talking and he started telling me
he could find others willing to donate
if I knew of anyone who needed transplants.
So that's how it started.
Yemenis weren't the only victims of the organ trade in Egypt.
Vulnerable migrants and refugees from across
Africa and the Middle East were, and still are
coaxed into selling their organs Africa and the Middle East were, and still are
coaxed into selling their organs
or have them harvested against their will.
But recruitment was a lot easier in Yemen
because the country has no laws against organ trafficking.
We worked with the security apparatus
and specifically the Ministry of Interior
and informed them of 87 brokers.
They were caught, arrested, and taken to court.
But they were all released.
It seems to have started in 2008 and 2009.
I was a police officer with criminal investigations
before I worked here.
We received some information about people
who were going to leave the country
for suspicious reasons.
Soon after, we caught a man
trying to leave Sanaa for Cairo.
During our interrogation, we found out
some shocking information.
It became clear that more than 50 or 60 other people
were somehow involved with this guy.
Some of them to leave later
others who'd already sold their kidneys.
Nabil left his job with the police to found
his anti-trafficking organisation soon after.
Through years of collecting testimonies and evidence
he began to connect the dots between
the organ trafficking incidents.
Here's what we learned about how the system works.
So we told him that we don't have passports
but he told us not to worry about it.
That he'd sort it out.
So we waited a week while he arranged our
passports and spoke to his guy in Egypt.
Then he said we're ready to go
they bought us tickets, and we went.
They take your money, they take your phone
they keep whatever you have.
Even your passport.
The apartment was full of people there to sell.
They took our passports as soon as we
got there, and walked us out like sheep.
One at a time, two at a time
everyday for two days, three days
only going to the clinic to get
tested until they find a match.
They have your passport, so you can't leave.
And how could we, when we don't have
any money?
You would think the hospitals would've raised the alarm
about these Yemeni donors when they came
in to have tests done.
However, according to the brokers we spoke to
these hospitals turned a blind eye
because they were making a profit too.
We work with public and private hospitals.
In Egypt, unlike Yemen, it's illegal to sell your organs.
What is legal is Egypt's
growing, state-sanctioned medical tourism industry
that brings large numbers of foreign patients
and money to its hospitals.
In order to protect the image of this lucrative industry
and the country it's in
the government of Egypt passed laws
to fight organ trafficking.
For example, before undergoing transplant surgery
a donor must testify that they are donating
out of good will, and not for money
either in writing or on camera.
The donors, of course
say what they need to say.
They were videotaping me.
They asked me if I had come to donate
I said, "Yes, I came to donate."
You know, as they told me.
They had already told me it was important
that no responsibility would fall back on the hospital
so I said it wouldn't.
Several hospitals across Egypt
have been accused of hosting these donors.
The government has busted
prominent doctors and institutions
working in trafficking rings
over the past few years.
But in Nabil's records from 2014
one hospital in particular
kept coming up.
One that saw no arrests
despite Nabil's letters to notify
anti-trafficking organisations in Cairo.
The Intelligence Hospital.
Wadi El Neel Hospital.
According to our sources in Egypt
the hospital belongs to the Egyptian general security apparatus
and is commonly known as
the 'Mukhabarat' - or Intelligence - Hospital.
The Mukhabarat [Intelligence] Hospital is typically used
for Yemeni donors
and the receiving patients are usually
Saudis and other foreigners.
We approached the hospital for an interview
but hospital security claimed
an interview would breach their protocols.
So we called and spoke to someone
claiming to be a manager at the hospital.
No such thing is happening here.
There's an organ transplantation law in Egypt
that says that if the patient is Yemeni
then the donor must be: Yemeni
with a passport accredited by the embassy
and the embassy's approval to donate.
This law has been in place for years.
Anything but that is nonsense.
He's referring to an Egyptian law that restricts organ transplants
to a donor and recipient
of the same nationality.
And yet, all three donors in this film
say they had their surgeries done at Wadi El Neel Hospital
and that the recipients of their kidneys
were foreign nationals.
They found a woman from the UAE who needed a kidney
so we did the blood and tissue tests
and found that we were a match.
So I went in for the surgery.
Afterwards, she asked me how much I got.
I said $5000.
She told me that she had paid $50,000.
Most of the patients that come for transplants
are from the GCC
but there are also Italians
Israelis and Egyptians.
Besides having to be of the same nationality
the donor and recipient must be related
according to the Yemeni embassy.
It's the Yemeni embassy's job to check if they're related or not
to give the donor approval to donate.
So if the donor agrees
and the recipient agrees
do you still think people are being forced?
Proof of relation is signed off on
by the Yemeni Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Justice
but it's the embassy that receives this paperwork
and coordinates with the Egyptian Ministry of Health
to finalize the approval for a transplant.
and, according to our broker
they were quite lenient.
The embassy announced that it was illegal to donate an organ
unless it was to a relative
and that the relation would have to be approved
by the embassy.
We had 15 or 20 people waiting to donate
but this stopped them.
So the network sent me to Yemen
to get the necessary paperwork to prove relation.
I made a deal with the judge to pay him
80,000 Yemeni rials [$320] per case
and he'd get it signed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
I had done 3 when they told me to stop
because they'd found someone at the embassy
who could approve the requests for $500 each.
To be honest
our work would be impossible without
the cooperation of government entities in Yemen
that made bringing Yemenis over to Egypt
much easier for us.
This wasn't the only accusation against the embassy.
We proved the involvement of the Yemeni embassy in Cairo.
There were laws in Egypt being broken
and our embassy could have acted
but they just denied it.
When we presented the embassy with our evidence
they acted like they would do what was necessary
but they didn't.
The embassy is still involved to this day
because this business makes them a lot of money.
After many attempts to reach the embassy
we finally got a response.
Regarding organ trafficking
the only thing the embassy does
is address medical authorities
and only after the documents required by
the Egyptian Ministry of Health and the Egyptian courts
have been completed.
Documents that prove kinship
come through a court ruling from the Yemeni Ministry of Foreign Affairs
and the Yemeni Ministry of Justice.
A document showing the approval
of the transplant procedure comes from
the Egyptian Ministry of Health.
The patient and the donor come to us
with all these papers
and all we need to do is take
all this information to the Egyptian medical authorities.
While the embassy denies any accountability
for what happened years ago
more and more Yemenis stuck in Egypt
because of the war
are now resorting to selling their organs
to make ends meet.
There aren't as many cases
now that Sanaa airport is closed
and Egypt has stopped allowing Yemeni citizens
from entering the country.
With the airport closed
Yemenis who went to Egypt
when the war broke out are now stuck there
and have been forced to sell their kidneys
out of desperation.
We've recorded more than 200 such cases.
But given the state Yemen is in today
it's unlikely that any significant policy changes
will be made.
In Yemen
resistance to the organ trafficking trade
remains civil and voluntary.
But even then
such organisations face challenges.
We volunteered to do this work
without any state support
and yet we still face threats and a lot of pressure.
This is probably going to be my last interview
because we're living in a country where
even humanitarian work is prohibited
or only allowed for certain people.
After we filmed with Nabil
his organisation was shut down by Houthi forces.
They had published a report
alleging Houthi involvement in organ trafficking.
Nabil was forced to leave Yemen.
There's no way we can actually work to stop this
when we're in the middle of war
and destruction, and poverty
and people can barely afford food.
What policies are we supposed to push for
in a situation like this?
There's no solution except to stop the war
and rebuild the country.
That's the only solution
and it's just not possible.