Albania drafts law in assistance of EU organ trafficking probe

TIRANA, May 2 – The Albanian government on Wednesday drafted legislation to help a European Union investigation of claims that a criminal network sold organs of civilian captives there during the 1998-99 Kosovo war.
The draft law made public Wednesday is expected to be passed by the parliament soon.
Prime Minister Sali Berisha said that it was prepared in a joint work from experts of the Albanian Justice Ministry and those of the European Union. “We are most interested in getting rid of such grave allegations against the Kosovo and also Albanians and Albania,” said Berisha.
The EU has set up a task force headed by American prosecutor John Clint Williamson to conduct the investigation.
In a report two years ago, Council of Europe investigator Dick Marty alleged that Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci and other rebel commanders of the Kosovo Liberation Army ran detention centers on Albania’s border with Kosovo, where civilian captives, including Serbs, were killed and their organs sold on the black market during Kosovo’s war for independence from Serbia. Kosovo’s population is predominantly ethnic Albanian.
Marty’s report followed allegations of organ trafficking in a book written by former U.N. War Crimes tribunal prosecutor Carla Del Ponte.
Both Thaci and Albania have denied those allegations.
Berisha also strongly condemned the “anti-Albanian” attitude from Dick Marty but said the government’s stand is far apart from that on a person.
Albanian government has always said they would be open and supportive to a full and conclusive investigation.
Meanwhile, a trial of Kosovars accused of participating in an international organ trafficking ring cleared Fatmir Limaj, a former KLA commander and minister afterwards, of the charges.