Albania urged to help probe of organ trafficking

TIRANA, Feb. 23 – U.N. independent human rights expert Philip Alston on Tuesday urged Albanian authorities to fully cooperate with an international investigation on alleged killing of kidnapped Serb civilians after Kosovo’s war.
Serbian officials say they have evidence that ethnic Albanian guerrillas sent kidnapped Serb civilians during Kosovo’s war to Albania, then removed their organs and sold them on the black market.
Kosovo and Albania have strongly denied the allegations of organ trafficking which first surfaced in a book by former U.N. war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte.
Alston, an Australian working as a New York University law professor, said that in nine days of talks he had heard all Albanian top officials consider those charges as ridiculous but not offering a “meaningful cooperation to a Council of Europe investigation.”
Last year Swiss Senator Dick Marty led a Council of Europe probe into the allegations. There is still no conclusion to that.
“I would call on the government to indeed indicate that it will remove the barrier of formal obstacles,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press.
A UN probe in 2004 had given no proof to the claim but Serbia has insisted on reopening the investigation.
“Given the strength of the belief, at the highest levels, that allegations of hundreds of people killed in Albania after June 1999 are unfounded, it would be in the Government’s best interest to facilitate an independent and objective investigation by one or other of the international entities currently focused on the issue,” said Alston.
“I would call on the government to indeed indicate that it will remove the barrier of formal obstacles,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press.
“If it is ridiculous, in order to get rid of this issue, make available a proposal for an independent investigation and offer genuine cooperation… I don’t think they are ready to acknowledge that,” he said. “If you are innocent you say, come into my house and check it.”
Alston met for nine days with Albanian officials to examine whether effective action is being taken to prosecute those responsible in unlawful killings, including blood feuds, domestic violence, and communist-era human rights abuses within the criminal justice system in the Balkan country.
The professor said Albania has made significant progress in human rights, including blood feud cases.
But he urged the government to be more directly committed in resolving such an issue and not leave it mainly to the civil society and the international donors as it a belief in the practice of vindicating honor and blood outside the regular legal system remains well entrenched in certain parts of the society.
Blood feuds resumed in Albania after the fall of the former communist regime in 1990. Their number has since declined and often involves disputes between rival criminal gangs. There are no exact numbers as the government tries to reduce the number, while the non-governmental organizations increase it, Alston said.
He suggested the creation of a secretariat to conduct a survey and analysis on the causes and means of ending killings and self-isolation, consulting leading scholars and leaders of religious groups, and emphasize human rights at schools.
He also urged international donors “to be more discerning in their funding programs … and should be as concerned about broader issues of violence and problematic traditions of collective punishment as they are about the exotic notion of blood feud killings.”
On domestic violence he said it was important that the Government follow through on assurances that programs and shelters will be allocated Government funding. Programs will need to continue to be supported and developed through the long-term, to erode the deep-seated patriarchal views leading to violence, and to increase access to justice for victims. He also urged the media to be more responsible in its coverage of domestic violence issues.
Alston also spoke on the Gerdec blast, saying that the Prosecutor General should ensure that the events leading to the G쳤ec explosion are fully investigated, all responsible parties prosecuted, and that, where necessary, requests for the lifting of immunities are made.
On the Communist-era abuses he said the Government should consider establishing a national commission to conduct an independent, systematic and sustained investigation of communist-era abuses. In the interim, the Government should ensure that the proposed institute for the study of communist-era abuses is given comprehensive access to every available source of information about that era and is able to make effective use of its power to refer specific cases to the Prosecutor for consideration.
The Government should legislate criteria and procedures to ensure the high professionalism, independence and integrity of judges, especially in relation to the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court.
The Government should amend the Criminal Procedure Code to enable the Prosecutor’s Office to commence investigations of high officials, including Ministers and judges, without first having to have their immunity lifted. The question of lifting immunity need only be addressed in the event that the Prosecutor has enough evidence to bring charges.
Alston was appointed Special Reporter in 2004 by the UN Commission on Human Rights.