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By MOHAMMED MAR’I

Published: Aug 28, 2011 23:23 Updated: Aug 28, 2011 23:23

RAMALLAH: The Palestinian Minister of Detainees and Ex-detainees Issa Qaraqi’ on Sunday accused Israel of harvesting parts from the bodies of dead Palestinian martyrs without the consent of their families.

Qaraqi’ said during the national day of Palestinian campaign to retrieve martyrs’ bodies said that “Israel is the major harvesting and trading centre in the world.”

The minister said that Israel holds the remains of Palestinian martyrs “to conceal the crimes it committed against the martyrs bodies and to punish their families.” “Holding of the martyrs’ remains for many years cats doubts and accusations that Israel assassinated them after detention or harvested their organs,” the minister said.

He added that “Israel is holding the remains of 338 Arab and Palestinian fighters in the secret Israeli cemeteries known as the Cemeteries of Numbers.”

Qaraqi' added that the Israeli authorities holding them in four cemeteries: One on the Israel-Lebanon-Syria border, two in the Jordan Valley and the fourth near Tiberias Lake.

On December 2009, the chief Israeli pathologist and the director of the Institute of Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir, Professor Yehuda Hiss, admitted of harvesting parts from the bodies of dead Palestinians without the consent of their families.

Hiss said that he and doctors who worked under him took parts from the dead skins, their corneas and heart valves in the 90’s for transplantation. He also admitted that the same parts were taken from dead Israelis for the same purpose.

Hiss’ remarks came in an interview with Nancy Sheppard-Hughes, a professor of anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley who tracks the organ trade worldwide. The one-hour interview was recorded in 2000 as part of Sheppard-Hughes’ study at Abu Kabir and was broadcasted by the Israeli Channel 1 television on Friday night.

The report said that Sheppard-Hughes decided to publish the interview after the leading Swedish daily Aftonbladet reported on August of the same year that Israeli soldiers killed Palestinians in order to trade in their organs.

The Israeli pathologist said that “the skins were taken from the bodies and transmitted to Hadasah hospital in Jerusalem under the request of Israeli army to be transplanted to sounded soldiers and in case of disaster.”

On last July, the head of Palestinian Civil Affairs Commission Hussein Al-Sheikh said that Israel will hand over the remains of 84 fighters to the Palestinian Authority within days.

Israeli security sources confirmed that talks on the matter have been held but that no agreement had been reached.