Standart News

Police in Greece have arrested five people, one of them a Greek doctor, linked to a Bulgaria-based illegal ovary egg harvesting gang exploiting immigrant women, officials said on Saturday. The 47-year-old doctor was arrested at a fertility clinic on Friday as he was about to harvest eggs from a 23-year-old Romanian woman.Two Bulgarian men and two Romanian women were also detained as suspected gang operatives, the police said in a statement. The arrests were carried out with help from Bulgarian authorities. One of the Bulgarian women exploited by the gang had been brought to Greece a year ago ostensibly for work purposes but was later sold into prostitution. She was forced to submit to the removal of eight eggs. One of the suspects, a 37-year old Romanian woman, had herself undergone the same procedure over the past four years and had brought at least another six Romanian women into contact with the gang, the police said. The suspects face heavy prison sentences if convicted.