Serbian prosecutor visits Albania to probe on alleged organ murders

TIRANA, Oct 27 – Serbia’s War Crimes Prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic visited Albania Monday to meet with country’s Prosecutor General Ina Rama.
Vuckevic and his associates were in Tirana as part of an investigation launched in March into the possibility that Kosovo Serbs were kidnapped and taken to Albania where their organs were removed after the 1999 war in Kosova.
Albania’s top prosecutor on Monday met Vukcevic who handed her the material the Serb side has gathered on the case so far, his spokesman Bruno Vekaric said in Belgrade.
Vukcevic is probing claims that mass graves containing the remains of slain Serbs could be hidden in Albania.
The meeting was very good “despite totally different positions” regarding the case.
Vekaric said that U.S. embassies in Belgrade and Tirana played an important role in setting up the meeting.
Kosova and Albania have denied any knowledge of the alleged crimes, while the EU has said it would investigate the claims.
Allegations of organ-trafficking involving Serbs killed during Kosova’s 1998-99 war first surfaced in a book by the former chief U.N. war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte.
In “The Hunt: War Criminals and Me,” Del Ponte wrote that, according to her sources, between 100 and 300 mostly Serb civilians were transported by truck from Kosova to a house near the Albanian town of Burrel, 90 kilometers north of Tirana.
The younger ones allegedly were picked out and killed by Kosova guerrillas, and their organs were later sold abroad, the book says.
Albanian Foreign Minister Lulzim Basha has called the allegations “inventions and absurdities.” Other lawmakers and personalities also turned down such an accusation.
Hundreds of Serbs and ethnic Albanians are still missing from the war. Kosova declared independence from Serbia on Feb. 17.