Chief obstetrician of Armenia detained in adoption case of orphans – organ harvesting suspected

Armenia’s chief obstetrician and director of the Republican Maternity Hospital Razmik Abrahamyan and several other individuals have been detained in the case of a recently exposed scandal involving the illegal adoption of children by foreigners in Armenia.

The investigation claims that mothers were told that their children were either sick and that they should give them up for adoption, or that their newborns had died shortly after birth.

Most of the children taken from their mothers in this way were then adopted by foreigners – more than 30 such cases have been recorded involving Italian foster parents, in which the process took place involving flagrant violations of the law.

There is concern that the children were adopted for the purposes of harvesting their organs, however so far this has not been confirmed.

• Criminal scheme uncovered in Armenia facilitating illegal adoption of children by foreigners

• Armenian orphans forced to leave their homes once they reach adulthood

“I constantly had the feeling something was wrong here”

The case involving the questionable adoption of children by foster parents from Italy first came to light in November when it was announced by the National Security Service of Armenia.

The agency said that mothers had faced psychological and other forms of pressure to relinquish custody of their children. The victims were mostly women who for personal or social reasons were going to terminate their pregnancies.

In some cases the women were blackmailed, and threatened with public disclosure concerning their pregnancy.

After birth, the conspirators in this scheme received a document that the child had been given up for adoption, on the basis of which they took the children to orphanages.

This was often done on the basis of a fake diagnosis.

Talk about a suspiciously large number of adoptions of Armenian children by foreigners appeared back in January 2019.

At that time, Acting Deputy Prime Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said that there had been cases of adoption of children for the sale of children’s organs:

“Over the course of several months of my work, I tried my best to unravel this tangle and I constantly had the feeling that something was wrong here. Everything is very close to disclosure, but I still could not achieve tangible results. The money we are talking about starts from maternity hospitals and continues in other institutions, this is just the tip of the iceberg.”