Serbia reiterates Albanian PM role in hiding evidence from organ trade case
Serbian War Crimes Prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic reiterated that, according to information obtained from intelligence sources, former Kosovo Liberation Army leader Ramush Haradinaj asked Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha, in Tirana in September this year, to eliminate all evidence pertaining to the trafficking in human organs of persons who went missing in Kosovo in 1999
(KosovoCompromise Staff) Friday, October 31, 2008
Commenting on the reaction of Berisha, who called statements that he participated in the removal of evidence - fabrications, Vukcevic said this was indicative. Political pressure is at work, resulting from the interests of the Kosovo lobby and the "intertwined political Albanian elite which has provided support to the OVK from the very beginning," Vukcevic said.
Speaking about the objects that are believed to have been used as venues for performing operations and harvesting organs, Vukcevic said this did not happen in the "yellow house" that has been mentioned in this regard. The preparations for operations were performed there, and the people whose organs were surgically removed were taken there after the operations, he specified.
"It sounds morbid, but the human body, when dismantled, is worth more than two million euros on the black market," Vukcevic said, expressing his belief that the operations were performed in a clinic for neuropsychiatry from which around 40 patients went missing.
The next step of his Office, Vukcevic said, will be to address the relevant international factors to secure their assistance in the realization of the investigation.
Former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague Carla del Ponte said in her book "The Hunt: I and the war criminals" that the prosecution had acquired knowledge that kidneys and other organs were harvested from Serbs who went missing in Kosovo in 1999 and subsequently smuggled and sold to foreign clinics for transplantations.
The Office of the Serbian Prosecutor launched in investigation on the occasion of del Ponte's writing on March 21.
