Caballeros Templarios: Human organ trafficking, and using organs in rituals?

Chivis Martínez for Borderland Beat

Mexican authorities investigating the cartel "Templars" for organ trafficking and initiation rites in which its members forced to eat human hearts, said the Michoacán security commissioner Alfredo Castillo.

A report broke yesterday about Caballeros Templarios and organ trafficking.  I was awaiting information to complete this report, which you will find below.

Michoacán Secretary of State, Carlos Hugo Castellanos Becerra, announced the arrest of Manuela Plancarte, 34,(at left)  in possession of a stolen vehicle.  However, that isn't the big story, aside from being related to Enrique Plancarte Solís, aka Kike, leader of Caballeros Templarios, he is being investigated for organ trafficking.

Michoacán State indicates that Manuel Plancarte is being investigated for the death of minors who then harvested their organs and sold them.  Arrested with  Plancarte was  Ricardo Morales also accused of being linked to a network of traffic organs from children who were kidnapped and taken to safe houses

The commissioner added that fallen leader El Chayo is suspected of forcing Templarios to consume organs as a test of courage or if there had been a betrayal.

Dr Mireles has been quoted in the media frenzy of yesterday about an incident where children were discovered in a truck in Michoacán destined for organ trafficking, some reports stated the children were dead and in ice coolers. 

Having personal knowledge that organs must have blood flow and oxygen upon harvesting, or they are not usable, I had some questions, I received the answers today form Dr Mireles.

Alfredo Castillo

Information from a checkpoint guard, a refrigerated van was stopped in Tepalcatepec in December 2012, at 2 am.  (I was given the guards name, but will not use it. He was in charge of the case and wrote the report)

 

The van drivers said they were going to the island. (Lazaro Cardenas Port) and that they were lost, they asked for directions.  They acted suspiciously.

When the van was inspected, friends of Dr Mireles (guards)  found 7 children wearing Mexico City school uniforms, and wrapped in blankets..  When the children were questioned, they related that their parents had authorized for them to be taken on a beach trip.  The parents were contacted and instructed to come and take the children home.

The drivers, a man and a woman, were questioned further. They admitted  that they were going to take children for the business of the trafficking  of organs.

Rumors have surrounded the Templarios cartel for about as long as they have been in existence, in 2011 after the first “death” of Nazario Moreno aka “El Chayo”.

Organ hawking is clearly an alluring market,   On the black market a kidney fetches 150k USD or  higher.  In the United States there are 95k patients on the waiting list for a kidney, half will die without receiving one.

In many Asian countries, selling a kidney is legal.  This opened the door for organized crime to diversify into a new market.  People began being kidnapped, initially for a kidney.  Mostly peasants or by using employment scams to draw impoverished people from within the country or drawing from outside the country.  Victims would often be paid 2-4K for a kidney. 

Later the market demands for other organs became irresistible for organized crime, who structured a system of scouts, and brokers to accommodate the market.  In China, a person will be kidnapped by the scouts and delivered to a medical facility staffed with doctors who don’t ask questions and do not care what is transpiring.  They harvest the organs. 

Organ trafficking is a billion dollar business in China. 

There was a recent heart wrenching case in which a 6 year old boy was kidnapped and was found abandon in a field, crying and bloody.  His eyes had been removed, presumably for the corneas. 

Professor Arthur L Caplan, head of medical ethics at Langone New York University and spokesman for Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, said: ‘As unimaginable and untrue as this boy’s torment sounds, it shocks but does not surprise.”

‘Whereas hearts, livers and kidneys must be sourced from donors who match the same blood and body type of recipient patients, in-demand corneas for corrective eyesight operations can be taken from any age and body type.

Professor Caplan urged international governments to ‘stand up to China’ and take action to make it clean up its transplant industry.

Transplant tourists who travel to China with the right amount of money can order the organ needed, he said. A person or prisoner is found to match the recipient and is taken out and shot.

The World Health Organization estimates there are upwards of 7000 kidneys sold on the black market each year.  Others think that number is grossly underestimated.
 

In Mexico, there was a case of 4 missing indigenous children, kidnapped on their walk to school.  A few days later their bodies were discovered in a shallow grave, the chest cavity of each had been opened and organs removed.  State officials quickly stifled the story and declared there was no indication of organ harvesting in this case or any.  I read the account in a regional newspaper which also ran the photos of the four children, when I returned to the website the following day, the story had been deleted.

 

I had always been a skeptic of the organ trafficking rumors because of the enormity of necessary logistics required in harvesting and the process to assure the integrity of the organ.  And the time element, an average of 11 hours from harvesting to transplant, in the most favorable conditions, for the  heart, pancreas, kidneys, intestine, and liver. 

Corneas, skin and bone are viable of up to 5 years.

However, knowing how the organ black market  industry functions in China, there is absolutely no reason why organized crime groups in Mexico can't do likewise.  One can imagine that for a lure of high payment, a medical facility and low paid, unscrupulous doctors, can be  accessed... who will harvest the organs...no questions asked.