EULEX chief ready to investigate alleged “ethnic crimes”

TIRANA, April 20 – The Serb media insists on the issue of alleged ethnic crimes committed by the ethnic Albanian fighters of the KLA (Kosova Liberation Army) just after the war in 1999 ended.
The Vecernje Novosti reported that the EU mission in Kosova chief had said that “all cases of ethnically motivated crimes for which there is evidence will be processed”.
Yves de Kermabon told Belgrade daily Vecernje Novosti that the mission’s prosecutors will open the case of the traded of organs taken from kidnapped Kosovo Serbs when all necessary information has been gathered.
De Kermabon was in Albania last week and he said the same thing, always referring to whether there was enough evidence to support that idea.
Albania has made it clear it would cooperate with international institutions to reopen an investigation but denied that right to a Serb prosecutor.
“EULEX will first carefully examine the evidence received from UNMIK about organ trafficking in northern Albania and then consider what steps to take,” he said.
“EULEX is ready to take over information from other people, if it exists. When all the information has been gathered, our prosecutors could open this case, because it is within the mandate of our mission, and we will do it.”
Kermabon told the newspaper that the mission will be “very careful in these cases”, as “all the facts and information needs to be gathered” to conduct them.
Asked whether EULEX will process numerous cases of ethnically motivated crimes, such as the murder of Serb children in Gorazdevac, he said that the EU mission will do so with all the crimes for which there is evidence.
“We are working with prosecutors from Serbia on some war crimes, but, apart from wishing to call on everyone to be careful with statements about it, I would also like to call on all those who have evidence and facts to come forward and contribute to the work on all these cases,” said Kermabon.
All started after the former Hague Tribunal Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte wrote a book making the claims.