Egyptian baby-trafficking ring busted by police
Egyptian police have busted a large-scale baby trafficking ring that sold almost 300 babies.
An Egyptian baby trafficking ring that sold almost 300 babies for $570 each or less has been broken up, police announced Sunday.
Police arrested two nurses and a doctor at a Cairo hospital, where babies were being sold off for almost three years, Agence France Presse reported.
The hospital's manager escaped arrest; police are still searching for him.
The babies were mostly children of mothers who were too late to have abortions, BBC News reported. The hospital offered them Caesarean sections and then sold their infants when they were born, earning a profit in the process.
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Abortions are legal Egypt if the mother's health is at risk, according to BBC. Adoption, however, is illegal, AFP reported.
"Trade in such a black market in babies would have enabled couples to avoid Egypt's legal restrictions," said the BBC's Kevin Connolly in Cairo. "Although the details of the case provided by police are sketchy, it appears they have disrupted an extensive child-trafficking ring."