Abu Kabir Forensic Institute



The L. Greenberg National Institute of Forensic Medicine (המכון הלאומי לרפואה משפטית ע"ש ל' גרינברג; also known as the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute or simply Abu Kabir ) is an Israeli forensic research laboratory located in the Abu Kabir neighborhood of Tel Aviv, Israel.

The Abu Kabir Institute is the only facility in Israel authorized to conduct autopsies in cases of unnatural death. The lab at Abu Kabir conducts forensic examination in cases of rape, homicide, suicide and suspicious death. It also identifies victims of terror attacks.

History
Established in 1954 as part of the Israel Police Division of Criminal Identification (today the Division of Identification & Forensic Science), the institute was opened in June 1955, thanks to a donation from the Jewish Federation in South Africa in honor of Judge Leopold Greenberg. In November 1955, when its opening was announced in an official ceremony, responsibility was transferred to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 1975 the institute was transferred to the responsibility of the Israeli Ministry of Health, in 1988 it was affiliated to the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University, and in 2004 it was transferred to the administrative management of the Assaf Harofeh Medical Center. In 2012 it was decided to transfer it to the management of the medical administration at the Ministry of Health.

Duties
At the institute, about 2,000 tests are conducted every year on the remains of people who died unexpectedly, in order to find out the cause of death by autopsy. The family's consent or a court order is required for the examination. It also conducts about 600 tests a year of living people, for legal purposes, following acts of violence. The main areas of research at the institute include sudden and unexpected infant death, alternative methods for examining bodies, identification of remains, domestic violence and war and gunshot wounds. In addition, the institute collects and processes genetic data regarding the Israeli population while comparing the Arab and Jewish populations.

The Department of Forensic Biology operating at the institute deals with the identification, based on genetic and other characteristics, of corpses that cannot be identified due to their mutilation (for example, as a result of an attack or due to a long period of time between death and until the body was found). The department also assists in solving serious crimes using biological evidence (such as DNA identification).

The anthropological laboratory operating at the institute deals with legal anthropology.

The institute is the only recognized institution in Israel to specialize in forensic medicine.

Organ Removal Allegations
In 2005, the then chief pathologist Yehuda Hiss, director of Abu Kabir from 1988 to 2004, admitted, as part of a plea bargain, to the unauthorized removal of organs, bone and tissue from 125 bodies in the 1990s. Israel said that such activity stopped in 2000.

In 2009, Abu Kabir was mentioned in a controversial article in Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet by Donald Boström. Boström accused the institute of being part of a human organ trafficking ring in which Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers abducted Palestinians to "harvest" their organs.

Boström later admitted having no evidence. "I have a personal opinion," Boström told Israel Radio. "It concerns me to the extent that I want it to be investigated. But whether it's true or not—I have no idea, I have no clue." In an interview with an Israeli newspaper, Boström said his allegations were based on hearsay: "What I experienced during this day is many people from Israel who called me haven't read the article. So they think I'm accusing the IDF of stealing organs. That's not what I'm doing. I just recorded the Palestinian families saying that."

The Israeli Ministry of Health later acknowledged that "skin, corneas, heart valves and bones" had been removed during autopsies of Israelis, including IDF soldiers, Palestinians and foreign workers in the 1990s. The ministry says that for the past decade, procedures carried out at Abu Kabir have conformed with ethics and Jewish law, and all organ removal is done with permission.

Nancy Scheper-Hughes, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley who founded Organs Watch, an organization that monitors traffic in human organs, said she decided to publicize an interview with Hiss in the wake of the Aftonbladet affair. She described the involvement of the IDF as a "widely-known secret in Israel." However, Scheper-Hughes made it clear she does not believe Israel murdered Palestinians for organs.

The Attorney General of Israel dropped criminal charges against Hiss. He was fired in 2012 and replaced by Dr. Chen Kugel.

"Uvda" Television Investigation
In 2015, an investigation was broadcast on the "Ovda" program that revealed that one of the senior pathologists at the institute, changed the opinion he wrote regarding the defendants due to pressure from officials in the prosecutor's office. Following the publication, there was concern that innocent people were convicted of crimes and sent to long prison sentences due to the changes in the version. In addition, it turned out that the institute, which is supposed to be objective and impartial, refuses to cooperate with lawyers representing defendants and refuses to give them opinions, if they are contrary to the position of the prosecution in the case. After the broadcast of the article, the director of the Institute of Forensic Medicine, Dr. Chen Kogel, who was involved in the investigation before he took office, gave an interview in which he said: "If there is someone who sits in prison because of an incorrect opinion of the Institute of Forensic Medicine, it is terrible and terrible. I tell my doctors: 'May your hand tremble when you sign the opinion. Your signature puts people in prison for years ''