Tirana urges international probe on organ trafficking claims
TIRANA TIMES
TIRANA, Dec. 22 – Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha on Wednesday invited an international probe on organ trafficking of murdered Serb detainees in an effort to deny allegations against his country.
Berisha said authorities would facilitate an international investigation of the alleged trafficking in Albania from the Kosovo Liberation Army during the 1998-99 independence war with Serbia. He told the Justice Ministry to write a letter to the UN war crimes tribunal on former Yugoslavia telling they would be welcomed to investigate in Albania, despite the limitation from their mandate. The kidneys were allegedly removed from Kosovan opponents of the KLA and Serbs in detention facilities in Albania.
The premier asked Council of Europe investigator Dick Marty, who prepared the report, to hand over the proof to European Union’s EULEX mission in Kosovo, that would be considered a serious abuse with that institution.
Berisha considered him a “blind attorney of the Serb crimes and Greater Serbia,” mentioning how one million Kosovo Albanians were deported from Serb forces in 1999. the premier criticized him for being always an anti-Kosovo, anti-Albanian personality who has always been against Kosovo’s independence Albanian Prosecutor General Ina Rama has also denied allegations of human organ trafficking on Albanian territory.
“According to a joint verification between Albanian experts and Hague investigators, there was no substantial data found, therefore the prosecution has not initiated a case,” spokesman Plator Nesturi said on Monday.
The prosecutor’s office also downplayed allegations circulating in the media that it prevented investigations in the case.
“The Albania prosecutors’ office has no evidence to suggest the existence of an organ transplant center in the [town] of Fushe Kruja, or anywhere else in Albania,” he said. “Nor it has ever received information or a request for criminal investigation by an international investigative body.”
“The Albanian prosecutor’s office, which enjoys the trust of international investigative bodies, a trust strengthened by its professionalism and the level of cooperation, decries as baseless any insinuation that Albania’s institutions have blocked the investigation of this case,” the statement said.
A Council of Europe report last week said Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci was behind the grisly trade while leader of the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army in the 1998-99 independence war with Serbia.
The kidneys were allegedly removed from Kosovan opponents of the KLA and Serbs in detention facilities in Albania. Thaci and Albanian officials have denied the allegations, and Berisha claimed the report showed a pro-Serb bias.
Albania is engulfed in a serious international friction after Marty published his report.
Tirana insists that an investigation done from international and local prosecutors in 2004 resulted with no proof to raise any charge. Albanian authorities also say that they have offered full support and facilitation when Marty came to the country a year ago. But Tirana has always said they would be in favor of any international investigation but not directly from Serbia.
Albanian authorizes have also expressed their full support to Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, considered as the head of the criminal gang in the report.
Berisha said that the former fighters of the KLA should be supported. Berisha’s offer is also a response to what a Washington senior official has said, inviting both Tirana and Prishtina to offer their support to an international probe.
