The suggestion by Carla Del Ponte, the former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, that high-level members of the Kosovo Liberation Army kidnapped young Serbs, transported them to northern Albania and then harvested their organs for sale in clinics around the world is a political bombshell with incendiary implications for the Balkans and beyond.

The allegations are contained in a book, so far only released in Italian, called “The Hunt:  Me and the War Criminals.”    In it, Del Ponte admits that the evidence is circumstantial and not strong enough to sustain a successful prosecution, but adds that this is in part at least because she lacked jurisdiction to pursue the case.

The alleged crimes were committed after the end of the NATO-Serbia conflict and therefore beyond Ponte’s remit.    She suggests too that many witnesses were too frightened to cooperate. 

Neither the UN nor the Kosovo Albanian authorities have shown any interest in picking up the case.

Despite that, Del Ponte says she found evidence that some 300 Serbian men and women were kidnapped in 1999 and taken to a house in northern Kosovo, where they appear to have been operated on and subsequently executed.

In a highly damaging passage she also writes that middle and high-ranking members of the KLA played an active part in the operation.   Some are speculating that this could include the present prime minister of Kosovo, Hashim Thaci, who was co-leader of the KLA at the time the kidnappings are meant to have happened.  But Del Pongte does not name names.

This is political dynamite in the Balkans and particularly in Serbia, where there is seething resentment at the recent secession of Kosovo and the decision by the ICTY earlier this month to acquit KLA leader Ramush Haradinaj.    The court issued a long statement at the time detailing the difficulties it had in persuading witnesses to testify.

One immediate consequence is that the revelations will feed into the already highly-charged atmosphere surrounding Serbia’s general elections of May 11.    The chief beneficiaries are likely to be the nationalists who say that in the event of victory they will cease all cooperation with the Hague war-times tribunal.

Kosovo’s Justice Minister, Nekibe Kelmendi, has dismissed the allegations as “pure fabrications,” but with this book Del Ponte has ignited a fire that will not easily be extinguished.