January 31, 2008	Thursday	Muharram 21, 1429

ATHENS, Jan 30: Greece took action on Wednesday to help four Greek citizens whose passports were held by police in India in an probe reportedly linked to a major organ trading scandal, the Greek Foreign Ministry said.

A Greek couple were assisted to return home and two more Greeks were helped to find a lawyer in New Delhi, the ministry said.

“As soon as the Greek embassy was informed that Greek citizens are facing a problem it provided assistance within the legal framework,” foreign ministry spokesman George Koumoutsakos told reporters.

Koumoutsakos was commenting on a report in the Greek newspaper Ethnos, which claimed that two of the Greeks were patients at an illegal clinic in Gurgaon where ailing Westerners receive kidney transplants.

The ministry declined to give further details on the matter.

Indian police Tuesday swooped on several hospitals and residences in New Delhi’s suburbs where they said more than 500 illegal kidney transplants had been performed in the past decade.

In what is said to be India’s biggest organ trading scandal, a doctor and several middlemen were arrested and police are still looking for the suspected mastermind of the network of medical workers and touts.

A Greek woman is believed to have acted as an intermediary between the Gurgaon clinic and patients, Ethnos reported.

Organ trading is illegal in Greece, and other countries where the practice was common are taking steps to tighten their relevant legislation, the Greek state organisation for transplants said on Wednesday.

“Any Greeks that could be involved in this case are patients who seek a cure through loopholes in (local) laws,” the organisation said.

Over 9,000 people in Greece suffer from kidney failure and usually spend years on a transplant waiting list.—AFP