TIRANA, Oct. 13, 2022 – Albania’s prime minister has asked the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly to review an old 2011 resolution based on a report by Dick Marty, which Albania says has been found to be false.
The report falsely claimed that former leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army were involved in an organ trafficking scheme that also extended to Albania during the 1999 Kosovo War.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said in a speech to the CoE Parliamentary Assembly that the report had slandered the victims of Slobodan Milosevic’s ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, which led to thousands of ethnic Albanians being killed and disappeared and hundreds of thousands displaced.
“NATO and the international community intervened and peace was established. But the European institutions lost their compass and accepted unfounded claims, from the memoirs of former prosecutor Carla del Ponte, motions by Russian and Serbian diplomats, who managed to insert into a CoE report claimed alleged trafficking of human organs, a fake news item with shameful accusations,” Rama said.
The allegations were “well-crafted delusions” that were “expertly created in the Kremlin and very cunningly smuggled through the world political system,” Rama said.
He told the CoE representatives: “Your actions a decade ago have resulted in an ugly distortion of human rights, one of the most significant failures of international politics.”
Prime Minister Rama’s remarks follow a resolution from Albania’s parliament in July which notes that Marty’s report contains claims, which remain unsubstantiated, unproven and unfounded and thus should not be accepted by national and international institutions. The resolution has been officially sent to the Council of Europe and its member countries, and Albania is now seeking to change the document approved in Strasbourg 11 years ago.
Several steps will now take place at Albania’s initiative to get the old resolution corrected.
More importantly for current events, Marty’s report was the starting point that led to the establishment of a Special Court on War Crimes in Kosovo, with headquarters in The Hague and the initiation of a process that has accused some of the former top political leaders of Prishtina, including former President Hashim Thaci, of war crimes, that are yet to have been proven.
Rama’s remarks draw criticism
The tone and timing of Rama’s remarks drew some criticism at the assembly and in Albania, however.
A group of center right CoE MPs refused a dinner invitation in response to what they said was a harsh and disrespectful language used by the Albanian prime minister, according to several Albanian media reports.
The refusal was admitted by Rama in a statement, saying “they need time to analyze the facts and understand the monumental mistake” made in 2011.
Rama reserved his typical scathing comments for critics in Albania calling the opposition “people without a homeland.”
The Albanian opposition strongly condemned Rama’s performance in Strasbourg.
“He embarrassed Albania as prime minister and damaged Kosovo as an ally, at the most delicate moment of it seeking membership in the Council of Europe,” said Floriana Garo, spokeswoman of the main opposition Democratic Party. “Since he was there as prime minister of Albania, he shames all Albanians. Such shame has never been recorded in the 73-year memory of the Council of Europe.”
Rama has often been criticized in Albania for using colorful and harsh language against political critics and the media.
Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti, who is known to have a contentious relationship with Rama, did not comment on the remarks, telling a press conference that he had not heard them.
Rama has come under fire by the opposition in Albania for his dislike for Kosovo’s current leadership and friendship with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, a now-reformed politician who served as propaganda minister during the Milosevic regime.
Rama also landed in hot water for refusing to approve a resolution conemening the Serb genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina because it was the Albanian opposition who proposed it.
Analysts in Albanian media noted that Rama bringing back attention to the Marty report — which everyone in Albania agrees contained fake allegations — hurts Kosovo rather than helps it.
