Albanian lawmaker wants UNMIK support against Del Ponte’s book

TIRANA, April 21 – An Albanian opposition lawmaker wrote a letter to the UNMIK head in Kosova, Joachim Ruecker, to protest claims by the former Hague Tribunal international prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, that Serbs were murdered and their organs sold for transplants in Albania nine years ago. Qemal Minxhozi of the opposition Socialists also asked Ruecker to offer assistance to Albanian authorities if they had information on the case.
Minxhozi said people in the area of Gurre village, where the murders were alleged to have taken place, were angry about the claims, adding that international prosecutors had come to Gurre in 2004 and concluded there was no proof of such a claim.
A former Swiss parliamentarian, Ruth-Gaby Vermot-Mangold, who had been a Social Democrat, also said that allegations by former war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte of organ trafficking in Kosovo and Albania must be fully investigated.
“We hear about these kind of trafficking stories but we have very few concrete cases,” said the human rights campaigner. “It’s important to go right to the end of the investigation for Kosovo, Serbia and for justice.”
In her new book, Del Ponte claims – based on what she describes as credible and eyewitness reports – that Kosovar Albanian guerrillas transported 300 Serbian prisoners. The allegations appeared in Del Ponte’s just-published memoirs, “The Hunt: Me and War Criminals”, outlining her eight years as chief prosecutor for the international war crimes tribunal investigating the former Yugoslavia.
Serbia and Russia are demanding a war crimes investigation into the accusations. The Kosovar government, now headed by former guerrilla leader Hashim Thaci, dismisses the claims as untrue, and other officials and politicians have expressed skepticism.
New York-based Human Rights Watch has urged the Kosovo authorities to determine the veracity of the charges, saying there was “sufficiently grave evidence” in Del Ponte’s book.
Last week Olga Karvan, a spokeswoman for the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, said UN investigators had found “no substantial evidence” to support the allegations.
And Florence Hartmann, Del Ponte’s former spokeswoman at the war crimes court, said the claims were “irresponsible”.
“Mixing up genres, juxtaposing crimes that have gone to trial, and these non-verified theories from witnesses she doesn’t know anything about, even their identity, encourages confusion between rumor and fact, and risks encouraging all kinds of revisionists,” she wrote in the French-language newspaper, Le Temps.
A Swiss judge at the war crimes tribunal, Stefan Trechsel, also criticized Del Ponte’s book as unprofessional. He told Swiss television that she could not provide any proof to back her strong accusations.
Del Ponte, now Switzerland’s ambassador to Argentina, has been ordered to keep silent by the Swiss government.