Doctors convicted of Bogota baby trafficking
4 March 2011
FRIDAY, 04 MARCH 2011 13:52 HANNAH ARONOWITZ
A doctor and a psychologist were sentenced to nine years and six months in prison for selling babies in Bogota, Colombia, newspaper El Tiempo reported Friday.
Doctor Erber Jose Ochoa and psychologist Elsy Marina de Guadalupe Perez accepted the charges of trafficking and conspiracy in a plea bargain with the prosecution. In addition to almost a decade of jail time they will pay a fine of 533 times an monthly minimum wage.
Adenis Delgado Aguirre, who was also involved in the criminal scheme, was sentenced to seven years and five months in prison and will pay 433 times the monthly minimum wage.
The three worked a Bogota health clinic called Ecomarly which apparently urged women to keep their babies instead of aborting them in order to sell the infants on. Investigations also concluded that they had told women that their babies had died in childbirth and then trafficked the newborns.
The trio were implicated in recordings of their conversations in which they offered babies for sale, and were arrested eight months ago.
In 2009 police captured two women and a man who were stealing babies with the intent to sell them in Bogota's Las Cruces neighborhood.