Gangsta State: Kosovo's Drugs, Slaves, and Organ Farms - by Tom Burghardt
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December 22, 2010
Gangsta State: Kosovo's Drugs, Slaves, and Organ Farms - by Tom Burghardt
Report Links Top Kosovo Officials to Organ Harvesting
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14 Dec 2010 / 21:43
Report Links Top Kosovo Officials to Organ Harvesting
A damning report obtained by Balkan Insight names the Kosovo premier as the boss of a crime gang that sold body parts, carried out assassinations and dealt drugs.
By Michael Montgomery and Altin Raxhimi
A criminal network linked to Kosovo's Prime Minister Hashim Thaci summarily executed prisoners and harvested their kidneys to sell for illicit organ transplants, Europe's top human rights investigator alleges in a report obtained by BIRN's Balkan Insight, and the US based Center for Investigative Reporting.
Kosovo's government denied the allegations in a statement released on Tuesday evening. The statement denounced the allegations as a smear campaign against the Kosovo Liberation Army and the Kosovo state.
Kosovo's Government Response |
"Today, the Guardian newspaper published an article that referred to a report from a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Dick Marty, which follows up on past reports published over the last 12 years aiming at maligning the war record of the Kosovo Liberation Army and its leaders. |
The 27-page draft report will be submitted on Thursday to the Council of Europe's legal affairs committee by Dick Marty, a former Swiss prosecutor who spent more than two years conducting the investigation. Click here to read the full report.
Among the victims referred to in the report were Kosovo Serb civilians who disappeared from under the noses of NATO troops and United Nations officials following their arrival in Kosovo in June 1999.
The report alleges that the organ trafficking was part of a broader web of organised crime activities including assassinations and drug dealing. The report describes Thaci's role in the criminal network as akin to that of a mafia boss.
Thaci himself has repeatedly denied links to organised crime. In a 2009 interview he dismissed reports that KLA operatives ran secret detention camps and engaged in organ trafficking in Albania.
"It just didn't happen," Thaci said. "At any time, in any case, in any place, any space - this has nothing to do with the Kosovo Liberation Army."
The Council of Europe report alleges that the executions and organ extractions allegedly occurred at two locations near the town of Fushe Kruje, 20 kilometres north of the Albanian capital, Tirana. Medical personnel who conducted the operations in a makeshift clinic arranged to ship the organs abroad for what's known as "cadaver transplantations".
Some operatives in the criminal network remained involved in organ trafficking for a decade after the Kosovo war. A recent case involved illicit kidney transplants conducted at a clinic in Pristina, which is now the focus of a criminal investigation. European prosecutors today filed charges in the case in a Pristina courtroom.
The Council of Europe alleges that the organ trafficking ring was set up by Shaip Muja, a former chief medical officer in the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA. Muja is currently a top advisor to Thaci.
Asked whether he was part of an organised crime network as alleged in the report Muja told Balkan Insight on Tuesday: "I have not read the report. These are allegations that have been aired for the past ten years. I will employ all legal means to respond to this."
The findings of the Marty report substantiate allegations aired in a 2008 memoir by Carla del Ponte, the former prosecutor of the Hague war crimes tribunal, ICTY, as well as the findings from a 2009 investigation by the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network and the BBC.
The report states: "The signs of collusion between the criminal class and the highest political and institutional office holders are too numerous and too serious to be ignored.
"It is a fundamental right of Kosovo's citizens to know the truth, the whole truth, and also an indispensable condition for reconciliation between the communities and the country's prosperous future."
The report criticises Western countries, including the United States, for failing to take action to combat organised crime in Kosovo in spite of extensive intelligence reports documenting high levels of corruption.
Detainment facilities mentioned in the report |
During the Kosovo war, prisoners, largely ethnic Albanians, were detained, tortured and in some cases killed. Cahan – KLA supply and logistics outpost right on the Kosovo border. Kukes – A one-story shack at a disused mechanical plant in an Albanian town on the Kosovo border. Durres – KLA base at a hotel on the beachfront in Albania's largest port. Burrel – two structures and a house in a compound outside a northern Albanian town, serving as a transit point for prisoners. Rripe – two-storey farmhouse, known as the Yellow House, subject to UNMIK/ICTY forensic site visit, serving as a transit point for prisoners. Fushe Kruje – Two-storey detached farmhouse and final destination, where harvesting of organs from executed prisoners was alleged to have taken place. |
Among the report's findings:
*An organized crime network that engaged in illegal trafficking, including organ harvesting was controlled by the 'Drenica group'. The group included prominent Kosovo Albanian guerrilla figures. KLA medical chief and current Thaci advisor Shaip Muja was also named as member of the group. Muja denied the allegations.
*The Drenica group evolved from a guerrilla unit into a band of 'criminal entrepreneurs', involved in illegal detention, torture and murder of ethnic Albanians and other people suspected of collaborating with Yugoslav authorities as well as political adversaries in Albania during the escalation of the conflict in 1998 and 1999.
* Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci is named as the 'boss' of the Drenica group. But he "owed his elevation to having secured political and diplomatic endorsement from the United States and other Western powers as the preferred domestic partner in their foreign policy project in Kosovo."
* Albanian intelligence and military officials took part in interrogating people detained by the KLA in Albania.
*Albanian authorities have refused to cooperate with EU inquiries into war crimes and other abuses which allegedly took place in Albania.
* Investigations initiated by UNMIK into allegations of organ harvesting in Albania were not followed up, and evidence collected by investigators was destroyed by ICTY staff in The Hague without conducting an analysis. "We must permit ourselves to express astonishment that such a step was taken," the report states.
* Investigations into organised crime in Kosovo are often unsuccessful due to tightly-knit clan relations among Albanians, according to the report, but it also describes the situation with organised crime as "state capture".
* The recent case of illegal transplants conducted at the Medicus clinic in Pristina is not an isolated episode. "We believe that there are sufficiently serious and substantial indications to demonstrate that this form of trafficking long pre-dates the Medicus case, and that certain KLA leaders and affiliates have been implicated in it previously," the report states.
December 21, 2010
No more lies about the Caucasus or Kosovo
Features & Opinion
No more lies about the Caucasus or Kosovo
Topic: Russian-Georgian dispute
No more lies about the Caucasus or Kosovo
16:47 21/12/2010
© RIA Novosti. Mikhail Fomichev
RIA Novosti political correspondent Dmitry Kosyrev
Dick Marty, who chairs the Monitoring Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), is traveling to Moscow and Tbilisi on December 20 and 21. At first glance, this long-planned visit seems routine and relatively minor. But on January 17, PACE will hold hearings on the humanitarian and other consequences of the Russian-Georgian war of August 2008. Marty is gathering information in cooperation with the Russian and Georgian parliaments for a document to be presented at the hearing.
This summer Marty wrote a report on human rights in the North Caucasus, meaning Russia. Surprisingly, for the first time in the 14 years that Russia has been a member of the Council of Europe, the Russian delegation to PACE supported a report on the region, albeit with some amendments and reservations.
The real headline, however, is the sensational report Marty produced last week alleging that Hashim Thaci, the current prime minister of the breakaway region of Kosovo, is a gangster with long-standing ties to organ, drug and arms trafficking, as well as prostitution. Moreover, everyone who made decisions on Kosovo during the war in 1999 also knew about Thaci's nefarious dealings.
Russia also knew
The truth about Thaci and NATO's campaign against Serbia in 1999 are even more important for Russia than the reports on Georgia and the Caucasus. It was the events of 2008 - when the United States and Europe told lies to justify Kosovo's independence from Serbia - that poisoned Russia's attitude toward Europe. And these events ultimately trace back to 1999, as does the August 2008 war.
Unlike today, in 1999 Russia still had prominent international correspondents. The inertia of the glasnost era could still be felt, and many seasoned journalists were doing good work around the world. New correspondents were trying to steal the spotlight from their eminent predecessors.
Many Russian experts in international affairs worked in or visited the former Yugoslavia. I also went there, and I had no reason to doubt the reporting of our correspondents. Kosovo was front-page news at the time. A large section of the Russian public was aware of what was happening in Belgrade and Pristina.
We knew that the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was a criminal organization that had been coordinating the seizure of Serbian land in Kosovo by ethnic Albanians for many years, that the attempts by Slobodan Milosevic to counter this creeping expansion were thwarted by the United States and Europe. We knew that Thaci and his colleagues bought weapons for the KLA using money from arms trafficking and other criminal activity. And that's not all we knew.
Now Marty writes in his report that U.S. and EU security agencies knew full well who Thaci was, but even ordinary Russians knew this back in 1999. We knew that apart from a narrow circle of officials, the public in the United States and the EU did not know about the true nature of the KLA and, as a result, they generally supported Kosovars over the Serbs. At that time, this realization came as a shock to Russians because we were still under the illusion that the Western media were the freest in the world, an example to the rest of us.
NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia, which began on March 24, 1999, shattered any remaining illusions about the Western media. And this launched an era of Russia's profound and almost irreversible mistrust of the words and deeds of the West.
If one side had simply started a war against the other, there would not have been this massive fallout. But in this case everything began with a massive lie, and people hate lies even more than aggression. It is an innately human reaction.
Laws of war
The era of intractable mutual mistrust between Russia and the West lasted just under a decade, from the aggression against Yugoslavia until the very similar events of August 2008 (similar in the sense that in both cases, the public in the West was misinformed about the true nature of the conflict). In 2008, the public in the United States and the EU simply could not believe that Georgian troops were ordered by President Mikheil Saakashvili to attack Tskhinvali while innocent people slept. Some people do not believe this even now, even though evasive and half-hearted reports on this issue have been written and conclusions made. But nobody can admit on the record that Saakashvili was the aggressor, although a narrow circle of Europeans has known this for a long time. Marty has only just now denounced Thaci as a gangster, and his report has yet to produce any major repercussions.
Let's sum up this era of mistrust. We can do this now because after August 2008, Russia and the West agreed to at least resume dialogue, bringing the era to a close. The damage, however, has already been done. Now we have an entire generation in Russia that instinctively mistrusts "foreigners."
Any reasonable Russian politician remembers the lies of 1999 and 2008 and reacts accordingly. Lies are a weapon of war, and these two wars were born of a lie. For that reason, you should always question the other side's information and adhere to the laws of war, whether the information is true or only half true.
Russia-EU political ties, unlike economic ties, have become a masquerade. Both sides harbor ill feelings. Now Western politicians will have to face the anger of their voters, who were told all these years that Tachi (and Saakashvili) are angels and Russia is the devil.
Russian politicians with pronounced pro-American or pro-European views - or simply views popular in the West - went to their political deaths in 1999. The internal structure of Russian politics became distorted. There is now an uneasy balance between two poles - enlightened nationalists and die-hard nationalists, without anything in between.
Politicians know more than voters
There have been efforts to turn some major European and American politicians around on this issue since around the winter of 2008 and 2009, but there is one problem with that: Politicians have always known that Tachi is a gangster, that the destruction of Yugoslavia was very dirty business, and that attempts were made to pit some puppet regimes against Russia - in Ukraine and Georgia, for instance - to effect regime change.
It is easy for politicians to reach agreements because they know the real facts. It's part of their job. But what to do with a public that is a full era behind?
Marty's report is a step in the right direction because it speaks the truth. Organizations like PACE are not very influential in Europe. It is seen as a supranational parliamentary conference. And the Council of Europe is just that - only a council. But such forums are sometimes the only way to get the truth heard in Europe, be it the truth about Kosovo or the humanitarian situation during the August 2008 war.
The views expressed in this article are the author's and may not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20101221/161873184.html
Was Europe blind?
Was Europe blind?
17 December 2010 Presseurop
Nicknamed "The Snake" when head of the KLA, Kosovo's PM Hashim Thaçi at a financial aid conference, Brussels, 2008.
AFP
The European Council report released on 15 December accusing Kosovo's leadership of organ trafficking raises plenty of questions about the EU's indulgent attitude towards prime minister Hashim Thaçi and former Albanian separatists.
In his report, Swiss senator Dick Marty, who gained fame for first revealing the existence of secret CIA prisons holding alleged terrorists, "accuses the prime minister and several government officials from the UÇK [KLA - Kosovo Liberation Army] of being directly responsible for organ trafficking", explains Le Monde. "Marty has identified six detention centres in Albania in which Kosovo Serbs or pro-Serb Albanians were held. These centres allegedly continued to operate even after the Serb surrender [following NATO bombardments] in June 1999". This situation, notes the French newspaper, "persisted until NATO deployed international forces. Once the prisoners were taken to Albania, they were tortured" – and their organs were removed, in some cases.
This is not the first time such accusations have been levelled at Thaçi and his henchmen, points out Le Monde: in her book The Hunt (2008), Carla del Ponte, former prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, "already accused KLA members, who were leading the armed struggle against Serbia at the time, of extracting organs from nearly 300 captives held in Albania".
Kidnapped on orders from the prime minister of a European state?
"Is it possible? Is it possible that people could have been kidnapped on orders from the prime minister of a European state? That he had them murdered in order to extract organs from their dead bodies, e.g. kidneys for rich customers in Germany, Canada, Poland or Israel willing to shell out up to €45,000 for the deal?" asks the Tageszeitung (TAZ). "Is it possible that Hashim Thaçi, the prime minister of Kosovo, unanimously backed by Berlin, London, Paris and Washington, owes his political power to wealth he amassed in criminal activities?" At any rate, according to the Berlin daily, "Dick Marty's report will heavily impact the dialogue between Serbia and Kosovo that has been heralded with much pomp and circumstance in Brussels."
Indeed, explains the TAZ, "Not a single Serb would agree to sit down at the negotiating table with Thaçi. Without him, however, it will be virtually impossible to form a government in Pristina following the general elections on 12 December." Furthermore, "If Eulex, the EU mission in Kosovo, wants to remain credible, it will now have to conduct an impartial investigation into Thaçi & Co – which it has refrained from doing so far because a number of Albanian politicians are former guerrilla commanders and still have armed groups at their disposal."
Everything about Thaçi's criminal involvement puts the EU in the dock
So how will Brussels react? Hard to say: "In September 2010, the War Crimes section head for EULEX made statements that completely, or almost completely, contradict Dick Marty's report", notes Le Temps. There was "no evidence", according to Finnish police officer Matti Raatikainen, to corroborate the charges of organ trafficking made against Thaçi's entourage, recalls the Swiss daily.
And yet, adds the paper, "The European Union knows that everything that emerges about Thaçi's criminal involvement will put the EU in the dock. How can it then keep demanding that Belgrade arrest Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb general still on the lam? Above all, how can it argue against those, like the young nationalist Kosovar politician Albin Kurti, who call for EULEX to get out after its shady concessions to the power elite?"
It is quite telling that the cabinet of EU High Representative Catherine Ashton reacted to Marty's report by asking him "to furnish proof", observes Le Temps, adding that "In truth, the EU hardly has any choice. Kosovo's independence (which Spain, Romania, Greece, Cyprus and Slovakia still won't recognise), rubber-stamped by a joint agreement with the United States, has always been perceived in Brussels as a bitter pill to swallow on the road to the future integration of the Balkans."
Translated by Eric Rosencrantz
Opinion
Burying the "good war" myth
The horrific human rights abuses that have emerged from the Council of Europe's report on Western ally the Kosovan Liberation Army (KLA) undermine former British PM Tony Blair's claim that Nato's 1999 war with Yugoslavia was "a battle between good and evil; between civilisation and barbarity; between democracy and dictatorship", argues Neil Clark in the Guardian. "It was a fiction many on the liberal left bought into," Clark writes. "But if the west had wanted to act morally in the Balkans and to protect the people in Kosovo there were solutions other than war with the Serbs, and options other than backing the KLA – the most violent group in Kosovan politics. They could have backed genuine multi-party negotiations, or offered to lift sanctions on Belgrade if a peaceful solution to the problem of Kosovo could be found." Nato's intervention in Yugoslavia, Clark concludes, was as immoral as the 2003 war against Iraq. "But as the Iraq war has become discredited, so it is even more important for the supporters of "liberal interventionism" to promote the line that Kosovo was in some way a success. The Council of Europe's report on the KLA's crimes makes that position much harder to maintain."
http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/article/433801-was-europe-blind
December 19, 2010
Blair's Kosovo triumph turns sour
Blair's Kosovo triumph turns sour
Hashim Thaci, the prime minister of Kosovo, is facing questions over his role in an organ-trafficking scandal that has shaken the nation and called into question Tony Blair's backing for the Balkan ruler.
Switzerland's Council of Europe investigator Dick Marty speaks during the news conference Photo: REUTERS
8:00AM GMT 19 Dec 2010
Dick Marty, the bespectacled and bearded Swiss senator who has been investigating some of the darkest corners of recent European history, doesn't look like a natural crowd-puller.
But in Paris on Thursday, officials and journalists poured into a room on the plush Avenue Kleber to hear him formally present a document which delivered a devastating blow against Europe's newest state.
In a report for the Council of Europe which took two years to compile, he has accused Hashim Thaci, the prime minister of newly independent Kosovo, not only of being a mafia boss, a murderer and a drug dealer – but of having been involved with a group that in 1999 killed prisoners to sell their kidneys.
In Kosovo, which was already reeling from allegations that Mr Thaci's party had indulged in what a senior diplomat called "industrial scale" fraud during last Sunday's elections, the report has been greeted with dismay. Not because of what is contained in it, little of which is really new, but rather because these are allegations which have been made before, remain unproven, and meanwhile sap the credibility of the country which declared independence in 2008.
In 1999 British troops took the high road to Pristina, Kosovo's capital, after a punishing 78 day Nato-led bombardment of the remains of what still then called Yugoslavia.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/kosovo/8211605/Blairs-Kosovo-triumph-turns-sour.html
December 17, 2010
WikiLeaks: President Tadic Conspires Against His Own People
by Srdja Trifkovic
WikiLeaks releases have not prompted a major reassessment of the U.S. foreign policy thus far, but the documents are nevertheless helpful in upgrading some tentative conclusions into incontrovertible facts. An interesting case in point is the relationship between Serbia and the United States.
Two months ago I wrote that for some years now President Boris Tadić and his cohorts have been conspiring with their foreign mentors to give up on Kosovo while pretending otherwise, and that they have capitulated to Brussels and Washington on all fronts. The above assessment has now become a "known known" thanks to WikiLeaks: Tadić and his team are acting exactly as described. Particularly noteworthy is a report sent last February 10 by the U.S. Ambassador in Belgrade, Mary Worlick, on her conversation with Tadić's foreign policy advisor Jovan Ratković a week earlier:
Serbia intended to continue its cooperation with the U.S. on sensitive intelligence matters and to increase defense cooperation … The Ambassador conveyed U.S. concerns about indications that Serbia would continue to take a confrontational approach on Kosovo … Dismissing the question of whether Serbia would seek an UNGA resolution calling for new status talks as a 'mere tactical issue' Ratkovic said the Presidency was focused on the bigger question … Tadic believes that Serbia cannot remain outside of NATO forever, but doesn't say this often because of the political sensitivity of the issue.
JOINT CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE - To start with, it is evident that "the Presidency" is violating the constitution of Serbia, adopted in 2006, by usurping the powers to define and execute the country's security, defense and foreign policies, all of which are explicitly reserved for the Government.
Tadić is also acting in violation of the National Assembly Resolution on Military Neutrality (December 2007), which precludes NATO membership. He is acting contrary to the overwhelming opposition of the people of Serbia to joining an alliance that illegally bombed Serbia for 78 days in 1999 before amputating a part of its sovereign territory and turning it into a hotbed of organ-harvesting jihadist criminality. He is acting contrary to his own public statements to the contrary ("Serbia will remain neutral"), while his aides are providing conspiratorial assurances to the U.S. Ambassador that such words should not be taken seriously because he is not telling the „politically sensitive" nation what he really thinks.
Worse still, Tadić is violating his oath of office which pledges him to protect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Serbia, including Kosovo as its integral part. The extent to which he treated the UN General Assembly resolution as a mere "tactical issue" became obvious on September 10. On that day Serbia effectively surrendered its claim to Kosovo when Tadić arbitrarily altered the text of the draft UN resolution – previously adopted by the Government of Serbia and duly approved by the Assembly – to exclude any mention of Kosovo's disputed status. He acted unconstitutionally both by usurping the powers not vested in his office and by violating his pledge to defend Serbia's territorial integrity.
SUPPORTING UNITARY BOSNIA - According to Ambassador Worlick, Ratković reiterated to her that the Serbian government supported the territorial integrity of Bosnia-Herzegovina "and would not be swayed by what he claimed was the desire of the majority of Republika Srpska residents to secede and merge with Serbia":
In this context, Serbia also supported BiH's entry into EU and NATO as a way to stabilize the country and cement the current borders. … He expressed regret that the Butmir process had not produced agreement since many of the elements of the plan were acceptable to all three constituent peoples… As Tadic's foreign policy advisor, Ratkovic's comments come closest to reflecting the President's views and vision on issues across the spectrum.
There is no doubt that those comments do reflect Tadić's views. Those views are catastrophic for the interests of the Serbian state and Serbian people. The "Butmir process" the failure of which Tadić regrets is a misnomer for a concerted attempt by Hillary Clinton's deputy James Steinberg, in late 2009, to coerce the Bosnian Serb Republic (Republika Srpska) into self-liquidation. The Bosnian Serbs unsurprisingly rejected the proposals because they would have stripped them of the remaining elements of self-rule guaranteed by the Dayton Agreement. Now we know – and not only suspect, as before – that Tadić is stabbing them in the back, in violation of Serbia's political pledge and legal obligation to uphold and protect the Dayton Agreement, to which Belgrade is a party.
DENOUNCING RUSSIA - The Russians, long supportive of Serbia's official position on Kosovo, are likely to take a jaundiced view of the revelation that Tadić and his people are privately denouncing them to the Americans. In discussions detailed in a diplomatic cable marked "secret" and sent to Washington by US chargée d'affaires Jennifer Brush in September 2009, Miki [Miodrag] Rakić, Tadić's chief of staff, told Brush that General Ratko Mladić is being assisted by "foreign sources" and hints darkly that Moscow may have better information about Mladić's exact situation than does the Serbian government.
"Russia has not been forthcoming on Serbia's requests for assistance in locating Hague indictee Mladić, presidential adviser Miki Rakić told us on August 25 [2009]," says the cable. Tadić is frustrated with the lack of Russian help, his chief of staff added conspiratorially: "Asking that the information 'remain at this table', Rakić told us that he had posed a series of questions about specific contacts between Mladić associates and Russian diplomats, as well as 'phone calls and trips to Russia by Mladić associates'."
SERBIA'S BENEDICT ARNOLD - A day before Julian Assange surrendered to the British police last week, the authorities in Serbia announced – unpromted by anyone – that he would be immediately arrested if he came to Belgrade. Back then this gesture, however despicable, looked merely like Tadić brown-nosing to his foreign mentors. Now that WikiLeaks have revealed the character of Boris Tadić and the nature of his regime, the President of Serbia has solid personal reasons for wishing Mr. Assange ill.
December 16, 2010
CoE's Marty: "Everyone Knew About The Crimes Of The KLA"
http://english.ruvr.ru/2010/12/16/37024591.html
Voice of Russia
December 16, 2010
Kosovo PM implicated in organ-trafficking – PACE report
The territory of Albania was used by Kosovo militants for the traffic of organs of Serb prisoners, a PACE spokesman Dick Marty told a Paris news conference on Thursday.
The topic is currently on the table of a PACE panel, of which Marty is the chairman.
He warned Kosovo authorities from whitewashing those behind organ-trafficking, including Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci.
Marty pointed the finger at some major international organizations, which he said played down outrageous facts of organ-trafficking in Kosovo.
He said that a PACE report to this effect will see the light of day in the near future.
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http://www.b92.net/eng/news/politics-article.php?yyyy=2010&mm=12&dd=16&nav_id=71564
B92/Tanjug News Agency
December 16, 2010
Marty: Everyone knew about shocking crimes
PARIS: Council of Europe (CoE) Rapporteur Dick Marty addressed reporters today as his draft report on human organ trafficking was adopted.
The Swiss, known for his exposure of illegal CIA-run prisons in Europe, put together a damning report on allegations that Serb and other civilians in Kosovo were kidnapped in the wake of the 1999 war, and taken to Albania where their organs were removed and sold in the black market.
The document names current Kosovo Albanian PM Hashim Thaci, formerly one of the leaders of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), as being responsible for these, and other serious crimes.
As the CoE Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee met today in Paris to adopt the report and draft acresolution that is expected to be debated in late January, Marty spoke to journalists during a news conference.
He stressed that he was "particularly shocked" to find out during his two-year investigation that a large number of people, and organizations, knew about the crimes but "did not wish to talk about it".
Marty noted that his report "said nothing new", and that "everybody knew about the crimes of the KLA".
What is new, the Swiss explained, "is that someone has said it, and put it in writing".
Marty told reporters that his task was to determine the facts related to a book written by former Chief Hague Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte - who first publicly mentioned the organ trafficking allegations in early 2008 - and that his job was "very delicate", because many people chose not to talk to him or his associates.
"The report simply determines that disturbing things have happened, that there is serious evidence that indicates the crimes did happen, that the crimes were committed by KLA members, and that to this day, these crimes have not been punished," Marty said.
The CoE rapporteur added that "these crimes have never been the subject of a serious investigation."
"Another revelation is that they include the territory of Albania. In that absolutely chaotic period in 1999 and 2000, that is, after the end of (NATO) bombardment and establishment of UNMIK, the KLA exercised power in the entire territory (of Kosovo), and that is when the crimes were committed. People were kidnapped, deported to Albania. You are aware that EULEX has opened an investigation related to secret prisons, Kukesh in northern Albania is mentioned there."
Marty went on to say that some parts of his report document "open ties between organized crime and politics, including representatives of the government", and that he was "not guided by rumors, but described the crimes based on many testimonies, documents and objective findings".
"Finally, we arrived at the conclusion that these events were known to many intelligence services from many countries. This was known to the police, to a large number of people, who would privately say, 'yes, I am aware of that', but who, for the sake of political opportunism, would decide to remain silent," he continued.
"What has shocked me is that most facts in this report were known to a large number of organizations, and yet that there was silence about it until this day. I believe that a future of a country cannot be built without truth, without insisting on truth and memory. There will never be peace between various communities if the principle of 'not wanting to know' continues," Marty warned.
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http://www.b92.net/eng/news/politics-article.php?yyyy=2010&mm=12&dd=16&nav_id=71563
Tanjug News Agency
December 16, 2010
Prosecutor: More evidence than in Marty report
BELGRADE: Serbian War Crimes Prosecutor Vladimir Vukčević says his office's organ trafficking investigation collected "far more evidence".
He was comparing the effort of the prosecution with that of Council of Europe (CoE) Special Rapporteur for Human Rights Dick Marty.
The human organs trade concerns the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), who are believed to have kidnapped Serb and other civilians in the province in 1999.
Vukčević refused to provide the names of the suspects, pointing out that results would be made known after the investigation was complete.
"I want to avoid bidding on a number of medical workers and people involved in the committing of the crimes under investigation. Therefore, I will not name anyone, especially since there is already a lot of speculation about this in the media," Vukčević said at a press conference in Belgrade.
The conference, held in the Special War Crimes Court building, was related to Dick Marty's report in which Kosovo's Prime Minister Hashim Thaci was mentioned as one of the people responsible for body parts harvesting in Kosovo after the armed conflict there.
Vukčević stressed further progress in the investigation would not be possible without EULEX and the CoE cooperating, adding that it would not matter who raised charges against the people responsible for the crimes.
"The question who would stand the trial - we or EULEX or the Albanians - is less important - ours is to prove the atrocities were really committed, it is only important that the perpetrators be brought to justice," Vukčević underlined.
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http://www.b92.net/eng/news/politics-article.php?yyyy=2010&mm=12&dd=16&nav_id=71547
B92/Tanjug News Agency
December 16, 2010
Committee adopts Kosovo organ trafficking report
PARIS: Council of Europe (CoE) Rapporteur Dick Marty today in Paris officially presented his report on human organ trafficking in Kosovo and northern Albania.
The draft report, detailing locations where members of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) took kidnapped civilians to have their vital organs removed and later sold, was adopted by the Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee.
In it, Kosovo Albanian Premier and former KLA leader Hashim Thaci has been named as the ringleader of a group that was involved in organ, drugs and arms trafficking.
Reports from Paris today said that the decision came despite "some attempts" to postpone it.
The Marty report confirms information obtained by the Serbian War Crimes prosecution that some 500 Serbs were kidnapped in Kosovo, to be killed in prison camps in Albania, where their organs were removed.
Deputy Prosecutor Bruno Vekarić says that the document will be a reason for justice systems in the region to "mobilize", while Serbian President Boris Tadić says the accusations from the report should be "checked".
After the closed-door debate of the committee in Paris today, a decision will be made whether to send a draft resolution to the CoE Parliamentary Committee (PACE).
Serbian representatives expect this to happen during the day. Amendments to the draft can then be submitted, while the debate on the resolution could take place on January 25.
CoE resolutions have "high moral value", but are not legally binding.
Nataša Vučković, a member of the Serbian delegation, said today the resolution will be on the assembly agenda in January and all members of the assembly can propose amendments to it.
The resolution, if adopted by the assembly, would be the first international legal document to describe the Kosovo Liberation Army as a terrorist organization involved in organ trafficking.
"The Serbian delegation commended Marty's courage in raising this issue and answering a whole series of questions that had been shrouded in silence and secrecy for a many years," Vučković noted.
Serbia's representatives stressed that it was necessary to find out the truth, for the victims, missing persons and their families, as well as to facilitate reconciliation and establish trust and peace in the region.
PACE committee demands investigations into organ-trafficking and disappearances in Kosovo and Albania
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Report Names Kosovo Leader as Crime Boss
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/world/europe/16kosovo.html?_r=1&ref=europe
Report Names Kosovo Leader as Crime Boss
By DOREEN CARVAJAL and MARLISE SIMONS
Published: December 15, 2010
PARIS — A two-year international inquiry has concluded that the prime minister of Kosovo led a clan of criminal entrepreneurs whose activities included trafficking in organs extracted from Serbian prisoners executed during the Kosovo conflict in 1999.
Related
· Report on Organ Trafficking Network (pdf)
The inquiry, prepared for the Council of Europe, names the prime minister, Hashim Thaci, as the boss of the Drenica Group, an organized crime network that flourished in Kosovo and Albania after the war and exerted control over numerous rackets, including the heroin trade, and six secret detention centers in Albania, some used in a black market in human organs.
Kosovo denounced the findings of the inquiry, which began to leak late Tuesday, ahead of the official release on Thursday. One official called the report slanderous and timed to harm Mr. Thaci, whose party recently won the first parliamentary election in Kosovo since it declared independence from Serbia.
The report did not explicitly describe any role of Mr. Thaci in the organ trafficking network.
The Council of Europe said the investigating team that gathered evidence used foreign intelligence analysts, international organizations, former fighters, logistics operatives and victims. The report cites some names but withholds others, saying local witnesses feared for their lives.
The roots of the network date from 1999 as the Kosovo conflict was ending. Over time, the ring established ties to "a broader, more complex organized criminal conspiracy" that operated in three other countries and endured for more than a decade, according to the report. The report was prepared by Dick Marty, a Swiss senator who had previously investigated allegations that the Central Intelligence Agency abducted and imprisoned terrorism suspects in Europe.
Mr. Marty, reached by telephone, declined to discuss the report or Mr. Thaci's role until he presented the report on Thursday to the legal affairs committee of the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly in Paris.
The allegations of organ trafficking are separately the focus of a trial in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. A European Union prosecutor, Jonathan Ratel, delivered his opening argument on Tuesday against seven men, including Israeli, Kosovar and Turkish citizens, accused of recruiting 20 people from impoverished nations with false promises of payments for their kidneys. The kidneys, in turn, were sold for enormous sums to patients from Canada, Germany, Israel and Poland. It was not clear whether, or how, the charges were connected to the cases in the report.
The Council of Europe, which is separate from the European Union, is responsible for the European Court of Human Rights. The report naming Mr. Thaci, 42, who was the political leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army, or K.L.A., was initially commissioned in response to allegations about organ trafficking in 2008 memoirs by Carla Del Ponte, who had been chief prosecutor of the United Nations war crimes tribunal dealing with the former Yugoslavia.
The Council of Europe report noted that investigators for the United Nations tribunal in 2004 went to the Yellow House, a notorious location in Albania, but later destroyed some of the collected evidence, which included syringes and traces of blood. The tribunal contends that it did not find enough evidence to aid any of its cases.
"The international actors chose to turn a blind eye to the war crimes of the K.L.A., placing a premium instead on achieving some degree of short-term stability," Mr. Marty wrote.
The report included testimony of people who provided logistics for the ring, driving captives in unmarked vans between a series of way stations in Albania.
The trafficking, according to the report, evolved over time and relied on detention centers spread through Albania that were controlled by the Kosovo Liberation Army. Initially the captives were Serb prisoners, but the ring also kidnapped ethnic Albanians to settle old scores, the report said.
A version of this article appeared in print on December 16, 2010, on page A20 of the New York edition.
December 15, 2010
"Chronicles": Trifkovic on Holbrooke
Richard Holbrooke: An American Diplomat
by Srdja Trifkovic
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2010/12/15/richard-holbrooke-an-american-diplomat/ December 15th, 2010
A few hours before Richard Holbrooke's death last Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a group of America's top diplomats gathered at the State Department for a Christmas party that he was "practically synonymous with American foreign policy." Her assessment is correct: Richard Holbrooke's career embodies some of the least attractive traits of contemporary American diplomacy.
As assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs under Jimmy Carter, Holbrooke was instrumental in securing continued U.S. support for Indonesia's occupation of East Timor. In 1997 he authorized arms deliveries to Indonesia in violation of the supposed U.S. arms embargo against Suharto's regime. It was during this period the suppression of the Christian Timorese by the Muslim Indonesians reached genocidal levels, killing 200,000 people or about a third of the island's population. Holbrooke's 1997 response to a reporter's question about the tragedy to which he had directly contributed was illustrative of his character and style: "I want to stress I am not remotely interested in getting involved in an argument over the actual number of people killed. People were killed and that always is a tragedy but what is at issue is the actual situation in Timor today… [As for the numbers of victims] … we are never going to know anyway. "
True to form, Holbrooke lied to Congress in 1979 that the famine in East Timor – caused by the Indonesian army's scorched-earth campaign – was a belated consequence of Portuguese colonial misrule. Over two decades later, in a lavish tribute to the diplomatic skill of his friend Paul Wolfowitz – who was the US ambassador to Indonesia at that time – Holbrooke boasted how "Paul and I have been in frequent touch to make sure that we keep East Timor out of the [1980] presidential campaign, where it would do no good to American or Indonesian interests."
Far from "bringing peace to Bosnia" at Dayton in 1995, Holbrooke presided over the imposition of a package broadly similar to the 1992 Lisbon Plan brokered by the European Union – the deal which could have avoided the war altogether but which was deliberately torpedoed from Washington. The chief outcome of the Bosnian war was a NATO transformed into a tool of U.S. hegemony, and the renewal of American dominance in European affairs to an extent not seen since Kennedy. The settlement at Dayton was not unlike a plausible compromise that would have been reached much earlier had America remained on the sidelines; but the meaning of Dayton was evident from Holbrooke's boast, a year later, "We are re-engaged in the world, and Bosnia was the test."
As special representative to Cyprus in 1997, Holbrooke irritated the Europeans by his strident advocacy of Turkey's membership in the European Union. His bias in favor of Muslim Turks against Christian Greeks in the divided island reflected a consistent bipartisan trend in U.S. foreign policy making. Holbrooke was not the creator of that trend, but he was its enthusiastic supporter – from Indonesia to Bosnia, from Cyprus to Kosovo.
In 1998 Holbrooke was back in the Balkans, preparing the ground for Clinton's Kosovo war against Serbia. On June 24 of that year he met with the KLA commander Gani Shehu in the village of Junik, near the Yugoslav-Albanian border, dutifully taking his shoes off like a good dhimmi. He promised American support for the the KLA campaign of violence against the Serbs. Earlier that year Clinton's Balkans envoy Robert Gelbard correctly characterized the KLA as a terrorist organization, but Holbrooke's visit signified a change of policy and directly led to Racak, Rambouillet, NATO bombing, and Kosovo's transformation into the Jihadist mafia state that it is today.
The most eloquent epitaphs are crafted while the person is still alive. Borrowing a page out of Richard Holbrooke's diplomatic manual, Vice President Joe Biden called him "the most egotistical bastard I've ever met." Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide, until last March the top UN official in Afghanistan, said five weeks ago of Holbrooke's Afghan performance, "This is not the Balkans, where you can bully people into accepting a solution." Eide added that the U.S. Special Envoy did not fully grasp "the complexity of the Afghan political scene."
Holbrooke's grasp of the complexities was illustrated by his calling the Serbs "murderous assholes" and by referring to Radovan Karadzic as the Osama Bin Laden of Europe. He was "synonymous with American foreign policy," indeed: he was a coarse, arrogant bully who understood diplomacy as the art of imposing one's will at the point of a gun. Richard Charles Albert Holbrooke was a bad man advocating and implementing bad policies.
His friend Hashim Thaçi wrote in a telegram to President Obama on December 14 that "the death of Richard Holbrooke is a loss of a friend," and he proposed naming a square after Holbrooke in the provincial capital of Pristina. The proposal is apt and should be adopted. The fact that Thaçi "the Snake" and his fellow organ harvesters and heroin pushers from Drenica are in charge of the "Republic of Kosova" is Richard Holbrooke's defining legacy.
