TIRANA, Jan. 3 – Kosovo’s Prime Minister Hashim Thaci said last week that a report accusing him of masterminding a human organs trafficking ring in the 1990s was an invention that would damage forthcoming talks with Belgrade.
EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton says that Belgrade-Prishtina dialogue is essential for peace and stability and most important for improvement of the quality of life of citizens.
Thaci denies the allegations and says he will sue his accusers. Former UN war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte is one of them. The crime syndicate allegedly murdered prisoners then sold their kidneys. Some of the victims may have been Kosovar Serbs who were killed in 1999 at Kosovo Liberation Army camps in Albania.
But the issue also involved Albania and Serb media also accused directly Prime Minister Sali Berisha of being directly involved in weapon trafficking to Kosovo.
The Serbian “Politika” newspaper claims that Berisha was the leader of a gang of arms smugglers to Kosovo in the 1990s, adding to the serious accusations contained in the report by Dick Marty, which he wrote for the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, PACE, in which he asserted that Thaci was at the head of a group which committed heinous crimes against humanity, including the selling of human organs. According to the newspaper, Belgrade prosecutors have testimony from four Kosovo Albanians who say they purchased weapons in Berisha’s house in the northern village of Prifc.
Berisha called the accusation by “Politika” a libel and a part of the anti-Albania hysteria orchestrated by Dick Marty, while Thaci calls PACE’s assertion a “political pamphlet prepared in Serbia, with the blessing of Russia”.
“Politika is the mouthpiece of Serb ultra-nationalist circles and a blind advocate of the genocide committed by the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Kosovo,” Berisha said.
But the issue will remain a topic of discussion and one to deal with for the Albanian government and international institutions.
Tirana has made it clear there is no proof at all about Marty’s allegations and has called for an international investigation on the issue.
That means that Tirana should keep a close eye and ear to the issue and not leave it aside. Belgrade will insist and exploit that very well, as it has done until now.
That issue normally casts a doubt on the tiny Balkan country, which is now working to change its image and also become part of the westernized European world.
Care urged to deal with Marty’s report
TIRANA – Besnik Mustafaj, former foreign minister, urged Albanian politicians to show a mature, cold-blooded and less emotive reaction to Dick Marty’s report on alleged organ traffic in Albania and Kosovo.
In an interview with the BBC Mustafaj said that Albanian politicians and leaders in Kosovo and Albania should particularly select the proper legal institutions and formalities to oppose the claims from Marty’s report.
It seems that the case will continue to remain a top issue this year and Albanians should try hard to change the image it creates on them.
This week the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church accused former U.N. and NATO administrators of Kosovo of covering up reports of an alleged illegal human organs trade in the former Serbian province.
Patriarch Irinej said in his Orthodox Christmas address that the international officials “certainly knew what was happening on the field” when they ran Kosovo after the war for secession ended in 1999.
Swiss Senator Dick Marty, a Council of Europe investigator, last month released a report alleging that kidneys and other organs were removed from Serbs and other non-Albanians in detention facilities run by rebel Kosovo Albanians in neighboring Albania in 1999.
Albanian officials in Kosovo and Albania have vehemently denied the accusations.
Kosovo _ which declared independence from Serbia in 2008 _ came under U.N. and NATO administration after a 1999 NATO-led air war halted former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic’s crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists there. The U.N. handed over the administration of Kosovo to the European Union in 2008.
Mustafaj said that reactions to Marty’s report should be wise and not pass into offense against him. Emotions in the reactions so far have damaged the ties with the international institutions.
Albania has invited an international investigation into claims it was linked with the trafficking of organs from slain civilians during the war in neighboring Kosovo.
Tirana has said the government will offer full cooperation with the United Nations war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, should it wish to conduct a probe.
