Balkan organ selling alleged
EU investigates Albania geurrillas
BELGRADE - Europe’s top human rights watchdog launched an investigation yesterday into Serbian allegations that ethnic Albanian guerrillas kidnapped Serb civilians during Kosovo’s war, then removed their organs and sold the body parts on the black market.
Leading the investigation is Dick Marty, a Swiss senator representing the Council of Europe. He was expected to meet top Serbian judiciary and war crimes officials during his two-day visit to Belgrade starting yesterday.
Marty also plans to travel to Albania tomorrow, the Council of Europe said in a statement.
After his fact-finding visits, Marty will issue a report on “inhuman treatment of people and illicit trafficking in human organs in Kosovo,’’ the statement said.
Serbian officials say up to 500 Kosovo Serbs vanished without a trace during the 1998-99 war. They contend at least some of them might have had organs removed.
The Serb war crimes investigators say they have concrete proof that at least 10 people have been the victims of an international organ trafficking operation, but that many more could have been operated on in makeshift hospitals in neighboring Albania before being dumped in mass graves.
“Whatever the truth is, we are missing between 300 and 500 people and that is what those seeking justice must have in mind,’’ Bruno Vekaric, spokesman for Serbia’s war crimes prosecutors, said.
Ethnic Albanian officials have denied the allegations. They said they are victims of Serbian propaganda against Kosovo’s independence, declared last year with Western backing.
The allegations were first made public in a memoir last year by Carla Del Ponte, the former chief UN war crimes prosecutor. In “Madame Prosecutor,’’ an account of her tenure as head of the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, Del Ponte said her office was tipped to possible organ trafficking.
Kosovo’s government spokesman Memli Krasniqi said yesterday the country’s authorities welcome “any investigation into war crimes committed in Kosovo,’’ but added that the real perpetrators should be sought in Serbia.
“Everyone knows Serbia is the one that committed crimes against humanity and genocide in Kosovo,’’ Krasniqi said. “Allegations of organ trafficking are part of Del Ponte’s imagination, inspired by Serbia’s criminals.’’
The ethnic Albanian guerrillas fought Serbian troops loyal to late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic in a conflict over ownership of Kosovo that claimed at least 10,000 lives. The bloodshed ended after NATO pummeled Serbia with air strikes and sent in peacekeepers in June 1999. Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leaders declared independence from Serbia in February 2008.
