Raids shuttered clinics in Dominican Republic kidnapping-for-organs case

Santo Domingo.- Dozens of investigators of the SantoDomingo province office of the prosecutor and National Police officers Wednesdaylast night raided three clinics and shuttered two, of the Centro Medico Integral.

The authorities entered the facilities and searched the areasof files and labs for evidence that people had been hospitalized to removetheir organs.

The investigators seized trays, utensils and surgical equipmentin the three clinics, where police officers and Health Ministry inspectors turnedaway ambulances with patients headed to the emergency areas. Clinic staff reactedwith surprised at the authorities’ action and said they didn’t know the reasonbehind the raids.

The raids in the clinics, located in the Ensanche Ozama, Hainamosaand Villa Duarte subdivisions, come in the wake of statements by the convict DawinJose Trinidad, accused of abducting, raping and selling Carla Massiel Cabrera,9, to extract some of her organs.

She vanished on June 25, 2015, when he left her home in thetown Pedro Brand, and her body was found some 500 meters from where lived,after the admitted kidnapper took police to the site where he had buried her.

Trinidad said he kidnapped the girl on a motorcycle andthen allegedly sold it to remove her organs.