A BRITISH court has agreed to the body of a Spaniard to be exhumed to see whether he was a victim of organ-trafficking before he died.
Miguel Ángel Martínez was 45 when he set off from his native Basque Country on April 28, 2005 with €11,000 in his pocket and the intention of travelling around Europe for a while.
His family heard nothing more from him until, exactly six months later, they received a call from Bilbao National Police to say his body had been found floating in a fjord in the Stockholm suburb of Lidingö in 'an advanced state of decomposition'.
Swedish police had attributed his death to suicide and, a year and a half later, sent the family a copy of the post-mortem which confirmed he had drowned.
Miguel Ángel's body was transferred to London, where he had lived in the past and had always said he wanted to be buried.
Once there, British pathologists reported that his body had been mutilated.
The body had no heart in it and only 60% of his liver.
Yet Swedish police insist Miguel Ángel had been intact when they transferred him to the UK capital.
Also, the British autopsy report said the deceased's lungs showed no sign of his having drowned.
Blanca Martínez, speaking for the family, said they were very distressed, as it could be the man they buried in London was not even her brother.
And 13 years after theyt last heard from him, they still have no real idea about the cause of his death.
The family, from Getxo near Bilbao, applied to the National Court for permission to exhume the body from the cemetery in the pictured borough of Gunnersbury, London so DNA tests could be carried out.
A further examination may also reveal whether the deceased – whoever he is – had been an organ-trafficking victim and check donor registers.
Even if three-fifths of his liver had been donated with permission in his lifetime, the lack of a heart has no other plausible explanation and, had he been a donor after his death, his body would not have been disposed of in a river.
A British judge has given them one year from the date of the verdict to carry out the tests and a third autopsy.
“There are no photos of the body in existence, no certificate of identification, and they would not let us see it,” Blanca Martínez reveals.
“The police in Stockholm who conducted the investigation did not know where the body had been found, and all the paperwork in the case is riddled with contradictions and lies.”
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