EU mission in Kosovo may probe alleged rebel abuses

TIRANA, April 12 – EU investigators in Kosova were ready to look into reports that KLA rebels trafficked organs from Serb prisoners held in Albanian prisons a decade ago, the Albanian Ministry of Justice said Sunday.
“We are ready to investigate such reports if they exist,” said Yves de Kermabon, head of the European Union Rule of Law Mission (EULEX) to Kosovo, according to a ministry statement.
Kermabon was speaking after a meeting with Albania’s Justice Minister Enkeled Alibeaj late Saturday.
It started after the publication of a book by former UN chief war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte in which she alleged that the KLA trafficked Serb prisoners to Albania from Kosovo for their body organs.
In her book, “The Hunt: Me and War Criminals,” Del Ponte said that some 300 Serb prisoners were kidnapped and transported from Kosovo to Albania, where their organs were removed for sale to foreign clinics before they were killed.
But Alberto Perduca, head of EULEX’s justice department, stressed that the opening of any inquiry would have to be preceded by an analysis of the available information.
In Belgrade however, Bruno Vekaric, a spokesman for war crimes prosecutors office welcomed Kermabon’s.
“It is effectively encouraging and we are ready to help EULEX and our colleagues in Albania,” he told B92 radio.
A recent report by the BBC, quoting anonymous witnesses, has also alleged that the Kosovo Liberation Army abducted civilians in Kosovo, torturing and killing some of them after the war.
Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu denied the allegations in comments on Friday.
Several thousand people, mostly ethnic Albanians, were killed in the 1998-1999 Kosovo conflict between Albanian separatists in the province and Serbian forces.
Ethnic Albanian-majority Kosovo declared independence from Serbia on February 17, 2008 despite Belgrade’s fierce opposition.