Reactions to CoE investigator’s report

Source: B92, Tanjug

BELGRADE, PRIŠTINA -- After the adoption of Dick Marty’s report, Hashim Thaci has denied accusations against him, linking him to human organs trafficking.

The map of suspected detention facilities used by the KLA in Albania


The CoE Human Rights Committee adopted both the report and a draft resolution linking the Kosovo Albanian leader to trade in organs harvested from kidnapped Serb and other civilians in Kosovo in 1999.

Thaci, who is currently Kosovo's PM, has denied all allegations and called them “offensive”. “The goal of these accusations is to destroy the image and international reputation of the state of Kosovo,” he claims.

Thaci said Marty’s allegations were “scandalous” and that his report “is a text full of lies and defamation which are recycled propaganda that has been going on for the last 15 years”.

He stressed that the accusations were launched “by persons who do not wish well to Kosovo and its citizens”.

The Kosovo PM told a press conference in Priština late on Thursday that "Kosovo's institutions were ready to provide documents and arguments that would be requested" and demanded that Marty provided evidence and facts he mentioned in the report.

“We owe it to all future generations that will come after us to protect the values we’ve created as people, and that’s Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), from tendencies aiming at belittling historic role it played for freedom and independence of Kosovo,” said Thaci.

“All efforts in this direction are also efforts to destroy the state of Kosovo,” Thaci concluded.

EULEX Spokeswoman Irina Gudeljević, meanwhile, called upon the CoE investigator to present evidence for the war crimes and human organ trade allegations to the competent authorities.

“EULEX is taking very seriously all accusations of war crimes or organized crime,” she stressed.

“However, the prosecution needs to base its investigation on evidence. We encourage all those who have relevant evidence that will confirm the allegations from the report to hand them to the appropriate authorities,” the EU mission spokeswoman said.

“But what I have to point out is that the mission already has a certain number of cases that are linked to war crimes and organized crime that are being investigated or are in the stage of criminal prosecution,” Gudeljević stressed.

When asked about the private Medicus clinic that Marty mentioned in his report as a place where illegal organ transplantations took place, she said that an initial hearing had already begun at the District Court in Priština.

In Belgrade, head of the Serbian government's Commission for Missing Persons Veljko Odalović stated on Thursday that the adoption of Marty’s report was a great victory of this European institution.

“The CoE Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights adopted by a huge majority Marty's report on illegal trade in human organs in Kosovo and Albania, identified possible perpetrators and gave guidelines for future activities,” he stressed.

Odalović told B92 that he had witnessed suffering and disappearance of people in Priština in the chaotic period between 1999 and 2000, when 1,500 persons, not only Serbs but also Albanians, had been kidnapped and killed.

He underlined that ethnic cleansing was linked with human organ trafficking, and that now the international community had to offer full support and secure comprehensive international investigation of the case.

According to him, nothing can stop this process now from being fully detangled.

“Priština has to deal with the fact that the main suspect in Marty's report is current Prime Minister of Kosovo Hashim Thaci, however it is up to Albanians to decide whether they will take a risk and appoint Thaci president regardless of Marty's report,” he concluded.

Meanwhile, Dick Marty will visit Moscow on Monday and discuss the report with Russian officials.

Deputy Head of the Russian delegation at the PACE Leonid Slutsky told Kommersant daily that the main topic of Marty's talks with Russian officials would be the relations between Russia and Georgia, which PACE had been discussing regularly since the conflict in South Ossetia.

He, however, noted that during the visit, members of the Russian delegation would take a stand on Marty's report, in which Thaci was qualified as the leader of a group engaged in organ, drugs and weapons trafficking.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated Wednesday that Russia was deeply troubled by the information of the possible involvement of Kosovo's top officials in the crimes against humanity.

FM: Organ trafficking case test for world

Source: Tanjug

BELGRADE -- Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremić said on Thursday that the accusations CoE Rapporteur Dick Marty must be thoroughly investigated.

Jeremić underlined that this would represent a "great moral test for the international community".

Outgoing Kosovo Albanian Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, whose party on Sunday won the election, was named in the report as one of the ex-KLA responsible for organizing kidnappings of Serb civilians in 1999, and their transport to Albania where their organs were removed.

“I see this as a great moral test for the international community. What we have here are grave accusations and they have to be thoroughly investigated and examined, and this issue must not be swept under the rug,” Jeremić said after his meeting with Algerian Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci.

Jeremić expressed his satisfaction over the fact that the Committee for Human Rights and Legal Affairs of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly adopted in Paris on Thursday Rapporteur Marty's draft report on Kosovo, and voiced his belief that the Assembly will approve the document at its plenum session scheduled for January next year.

Medelci congratulated the Serbian authorities for the wisdom they had shown in dealing with the Kosovo issue and for their opting for dialogue, which he hopes will yield a solution that Serbia will find as suitable.

Medelci also said that his country, which has not recognized Kosovo's unilaterally declared independence, had always defended, at all meetings with different international partners, the stand of Serbia.

The position of Algeria is that the (UN) Security Council is the only body that can resolve that issue (Kosovo), and that as long as the issue is not resolved in such a manner, Algeria will not be in a position to establish official relations with Kosovo, Medelci said.

Medelci and Jeremić also discussed the forthcoming conference of Non-Aligned Movement, which will be held in Belgrade in September, on the 50th anniversary of the organization's first summit staged in the Serbian capital in 1961.

The two foreign ministers also spoke about Serbian President Boris Tadić's visit to Algeria next year, when a great number of inter-state agreements are expected to be signed.

Del Ponte in plea to support organ investigation

Source: Tanjug, swissinfo.ch

BUENOS AIRES -- The draft Council of Europe report implicating Hashim Thaci in organ trafficking has been welcomed by former Chief Hague Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte. 

In an exclusive interview with swissinfo.ch, the Swiss lawyer said she was torn between concern and satisfaction at the idea that these “heinous acts” would soon be brought to justice. 

Del Ponte, now Switzerland’s ambassador to Argentina and due to retire early next year, was Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) from 1999 to 2007.

In 2008 she published a controversial book, The Hunt, in which she detailed evidence of the smuggling of organs taken from murdered Serb civilians after the end of the Kosovo war in 1999.

The ICTY said it had never seen evidence to substantiate her claims, and Thaci, the Kosovo Albanian prime minister, and the Albanian prime minister Sali Berisha publicly rejected them.

The Council of Europe report, drawn up by Swiss senator Dick Marty, who presented it officially to European diplomats on Thursday, says Thaci headed a “mafia-like” organization that dealt in weapons, drugs and human organs.

It says the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which Thaci led, had secret prisons where Serbs and Kosovar Albanians were held in inhuman conditions, before being murdered for their organs.“The information revealed in The Hunt led to this investigation,” Del Ponte said.

Del Ponte’s book quotes witnesses saying internal organs had been taken from 300 Serbs deported from Kosovo to northern Albania.

She said in the interview she was “shocked and deeply distressed” by the findings – “namely that the killing of prisoners with the express purpose of removing their organs and selling them for profit was carried out by senior members of the KLA, including some individuals who hold top positions in the country’s current government”.

She said the claims in her book were backed by “credible and verifiable physical evidence“ obtained by researchers from the ICTY and the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (Unmik) during a mission to Albania and in the presence of an Albanian government prosecutor.

“The reason I included these claims in my book was to provoke a serious follow-up, so that, if the findings warranted it, a criminal investigation would be launched,” she explained.

“Such a criminal investigation could not have been carried out by the ICTY because it had no jurisdiction in this matter. But UNMIK and the local authorities in Kosovo and the Republic of Albania did have such jurisdiction, and also had the authority to undertake this,” she said.

“I know the reports cited in The Hunt led to an investigation by the Council of Europe, a draft of which was published on its website in March,” she said.

Del Ponte said she was glad the Council had taken over the investigation, describing it as the “only credible one ever carried out by any competent body, either local or international”.

“Neither the Kosovo authorities nor the government or judiciary of the Republic of Albania have carried out any investigation into the statements in my book, and have now just dismissed the serious accusations contained in the Council of Europe report,” she told swissinfo.ch.

Indeed, on Thursday a senior Kosovo official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said Thaci had contacted attorneys to pursue a libel suit against Marty. The official said Thaci was also considering suing the London-based Guardian newspaper, which first published the report.

“So I beg the European Union, the United States, other interested countries and the United Nations to give EULEX [the EU police and justice mission] every political and material support to conduct a criminal investigation into these accusations and to bring to trial all those suspected of involvement in these crimes,” she said.

“Furthermore, I beg them all to redouble their efforts to build up and implement the necessary capacities for law enforcement and the eradication of illegal organ trafficking, in particular the harvesting of a person’s organs against their will.”

Del Ponte has no doubt that the world needs a better system to ensure a supply of healthy organs for transplantation, but thinks the depravity of killing innocent people for their organs makes it hard for many people to believe that it actually happens.

Perhaps this reflects the unwillingness of the press and legal authorities to rake up these issues, and the unwillingness of the relevant officials to follow them up,” she said.

“Let us hope the accusations made by the Council of Europe will be heard as a cry that will make the international community do what is needed to solve this problem,” she said.

Organ trade report "great victory for Serbia"

Source: Tanjug
BELGRADE -- The report by Council of Europe Special Rapporteur Dick Marty is a great victory for Serbia in the fight for truth and justice, says Bruno Vekarić.

Serbia's Deputy war crimes prosecutor commented thus late on Tuesday on announcement that Marty's still unpublished report accuses Kosovo Albanian leaders of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) for organizing kidnappings of Serbs and others in order to harvest their vital organs.

“Thanks to the help and the authority of Serbian President Boris Tadić and the continuous efforts exerted by judicial bodies, we have achieved the victory and returned hope to the families of kidnapped or missing victims,” Vekarić told Tanjug.

He expressed expectation that the “exceptionally positive” report will launch many investigations into human organs trafficking in Kosovo, and also in Albania, where courts have been "ignoring calls for solving the problem for years".

Vekarić noted that he will be able to comment on Marty's report in greater detail only after it has been officially published and reviewed, which is due to happen at the Thursday session of the CoE Human Rights and Legal Affairs Committee

If the committee adopts the report, the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly will discuss the document in late January.

In a book published upon termination of her office with the Hague Tribunal, former chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte was the first to publicly address the issue of kidnappings and human organs trafficking in northern Albania in 1999. Serbia launched an investigation into the case, which has since been dubbed the Yellow House case.

Thaci, KLA named in human organ trade report

Source: B92, BBC, Tanjug, Guardian.co.uk
STRASBOURG -- The ethnic Albanian leaders of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) were responsible for organizing human organ trafficking.

An areal photo of suspected N. Albania locations (courtesy of the War Crimes Prosecution)

This is according to a report submitted by CoE investigator Dick Marty, that should be discussed in late January 2011.

Members of the KLA kidnapped Serb and other civilians in Kosovo in 1999, to transport them to Albania, where their organs were extracted to be sold in the black market, according to this.

International authorities in Kosovo "did nothing to solve this case even though they had the evidence," the report says.

The Swiss investigator, who previously revealed CIA-operated prisons in Europe, is thus once again in the spotlight, with the revelation concerning the so-called Yellow House case.

According to the report, which B92 has seen, but which is yet to be made public, Hashim Thaci, Kosovo's outgoing prime minister, was the leader of the criminal group that abducted civilians and removed their organs.

Thaci headed the KLA Drenica Group in 1999 and organized kidnappings and the illegal organ trade, said the Marty report compiled after two years of investigating.

Thaci's KLA group is described as "the most extreme".

Marty further implicates the now Kosovo Albanian politician, whose party won most votes in the elections in Kosovo held on Sunday, in heroin trafficking and trade in other narcotics, which he substantiates with numerous intelligence reports from several European countries.

"Our first-hand reports have confirmed for us that Hashim Thaci and his close associates ordered, an in some case oversaw murders, imprisonment, beatings and interrogations in Kosovo, especially in the context of operations that the KLA conducted in the territory of Albania, from 1998 until 2000," the report says.

The document blames the Drenica Group for responsibility for the secret prisons in Albania and the fate of people imprisoned there, "among them many civilians kidnapped in the territory of Kosovo".

Marty's draft resolution to be discussed by the Council of Europe (CoE) states that there are many indications and evidence that confirm that both Serbs and ethnic Albanians were held in secret prisons in northern Albania operated by the KLA.

Although many wintesses to these crimes have been killed themselves, others are alive but afraid to testify.

However, B92 has learned that Marty believes a sufficient amount of evidence has been collected to make sure those responsible for committing the crimes will be brought to justice.

The still-secret report, seen by the BBC in Strasbourg earlier today, shows that prisoners were treated inhumanely and were subjected to humiliation, "before they disappeared".

The draft directly names KLA leaders, and says the crimes took place after the end of the 1999 war, and before international forces could impose order.

The human organ trade, which developed in the "post-war chaos", then took other forms in Kosovo and continued to this day, says the report, noting the Medicus Clinic case investigated by EULEX.

Dick Marty specifies that organs were extracted from prisoners in a clinic in Albania near the town of Fushe Kruje. The organs were then transported via the airport in Tirana to rich clients abroad.

Marty writes in the document that concrete signs that the trade took place were evident in the early 2000, but that international authorities in Kosovo "did not consider it necessary to investigate in detail", or investigated "superficially and unprofessionally".

The Marty report will be discussed by a CoE commission on Thursday. If adopted, the Parliamentary Committee will debate it in late January of next year.

Guardian's take

As the Medicus case trial proceeds in Priština today, guardian.co.uk reports that Marty stated that "Kosovo's guerrilla army" formed "a formidable power base in the organized criminal enterprises" in Kosovo and Albania.

The faction is known as the Drenica Group was led by Hashim Thaci, became the KLA's dominant faction and senior KLA figures from the group hold senior positions in Kosovo's government today, says the newspaper's report.

"In 1999, Thaci was identified as the most dangerous of the KLA's 'criminal bosses' by intelligence reports," according to Marty.

Thaci's KLA group is also said to be the main organization responsible for smuggling prisoners across the porous border. They were held in a network of six detention facilities, converted from warehouses, farm buildings and a disused factory.

The report, which states that it is not a criminal investigation and is unable to pronounce judgments of guilt or innocence, focuses on a key figure said to have played a central role in the organ operation, says the Guardian.

A KLA medical commander based in Albania, Shaip Muja was and remains a close confidante of Thaci's. Muja is currently a political adviser in the office of the prime minister, with responsibility for health.

"We have uncovered numerous convergent indications of Muja's central role [in] international networks, comprising human traffickers, brokers of illicit surgical procedures, and other perpetrators of organized crime," the Marty report states.

Marty estimates that 40 captives survived being held prisoner in Albania, and are alive today. Others are thought to have been killed, including "scores" who he says were taken across the border after the war ended.

Among the makeshift prisons where captives were held, Marty identifies the "famed Yellow House", near the town of Burrel.

Serbia wins Davis Cup

The Serbian tennis team has won the final match of the Davis Cup in the Belgrade Arena, after beating France, the nine-times champions, by 3:2.

Viktor Troicki secured the win with a straight-sets victory over Michael Llodra in the final singles match.

Earlier, Novak Djokovic beat Gaël Monfils to level the tie at 2–2.

Djokovic beat Gilles Simon on Friday by 3:0, but Monfils triumphed over Janko Tipsarevic with the same score. The French had an upper hand on Saturday, with Llodra and Clemont defeating Zimonjic and Troicki in men’s doubles by 3:2.