The prosecutor will ask the Criminal Court of San José to set a trial date for a 2013 organ trafficking case that allegedly spanned from Tel Aviv to Cartago as Costa Ricans were paid upwards of $20,000 each to sell their kidneys to Israeli buyers.
Twelve-year-old Noemi Álvarez, from Ecuador, took her life at a shelter in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico in March 2014, several days after she was raped, allegedly by traffickers.
There are more laws on the book than ever in Latin America criminalizing human trafficking, but these laws rarely lead to prosecutions or convictions, according to a report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
Following the detention last Friday of nine undocumented migrants on the central Pacific coast, Costa Rica's National Police carried out an additional operation Monday in the community of Paso Canoas, along the country's border with Panama. There, police detained 27 additional undocumented migrants, all from Nepal.
Officers from the National Police Friday morning arrested nine undocumented men and the driver that transported them inside an SUV near the Central Pacific town of Jacó, the Public Security Ministry (MSP) reported.
