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Latest update: 16/02/2011
- international justice - Kosovo - United Nations - war crimes
UN knew about Kosovo organ trafficking, report says
A classified document obtained by FRANCE 24 suggests the United Nations knew about organ trafficking in postwar Kosovo as early as 2003, five years before prosecutors in The Hague first raised the issue.
By FRANCE 24 (text)
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was expected to deliver a report on the situation in Kosovo to the Security Council in New York on Wednesday, reaffirming UN support for investigations into human organ trafficking during Kosovo’s postwar period.
But a classified document obtained by FRANCE 24 indicates the UN knew of trafficking well before the issue was first raised by Carla del Ponte, a former prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, in her memoirs published in 2008.
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The report, dating from 2003, is an incomplete compilation of investigations carried out by UNMIK, the UN mission in Kosovo. It describes organ trafficking that took place from 1999 to 2000, immediately after Kosovo's NATO-backed independence war.
The document, also obtained by the Italian news agency TMnews, details how senior commanders of the guerilla Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) obtained and trafficked organs out of Kosovo and Albania.
The alleged victims were mostly Serbian men, but also included young women from other Eastern European countries. They were taken to clandestine detention centres and private homes in Albania where their vital organs were extracted, leading to their death, the report says.
The classified document also describes cases of torture, execution and burial of Serbs as retribution for crimes committed against ethnic Albanians.
Withholding information?
The 2003 document has never been presented to the European Union’s police and justice mission in Kosovo (EULEX), which is in charge of investigating crimes committed during the war.
The first public allegations of organ trafficking by del Ponte gained little notice. But a report commissioned by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) – a prominent European human rights body – and authored by Swiss lawmaker Dick Marty in late 2010 gained much more attention.
At the time these crimes were allegedly happening, tens of thousands of troops were deployed in Kosovo by the UN, as well as the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe and NATO, to ensure the security of civilians.
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Comments (9)
This is dispicable
Is there any doubt when the woman who hated the Serbs, Carla DelPonte, finally could not deal with her conscience and had to admit to knowing about this terrible thing and wrote about it in her book. It's funny to hear how you people think that everyone was on the Serbs side. I don't recall the Serbs naming streets and building statues of President Clinton.
Let justice conduct investigation
UNMIK was supporting Milosevic's regime! Of course, it is so when it comes to Serbian victims, but when Albanian lies are concerned....When will the investigation start? When all the witnesses are murdered and slaughtered?
excalt
Kosovo is independent. There is no evindence of the organs.
Let justice to conduct investigation !
Serbian Propaganda for incrimination of the Albanian people is not new. Even during the 90s when the Milosevic regime and make systematic crimes and opresions against the Albanian people in Kosovo, Serbian media presented the Albanians as Acting violence. In reality, Albanians were the victims. If in doubt about the crimes committed in the period between 1999 and 2003 in Kosovo, let justice doing investigations and found guilty people to be punished. Remember that at that time the executive power in Kosovo was in the hands of UNMIK. There were representatives from the states since then and today supported the Milosevic regime. Kosovo Albanians have been and they are the main victims. Let justice to conduct investigation!
Sincerely George
Justice and the truth
The joined document is the proof of what went on in Kosovo from 1999 to 2003.Those crimes and those who ordered them should be punished. If W.Walker declared that 42 killed Albanians was a genocide, then, alleged crimes are a double genocide.
"The report, dating from
"The report, dating from 2003, is an incomplete compilation of investigations carried out by UNMIK"
Sorry to say but this is pathetic. Read the last page of the PDF and see what this is, it's NOT an investigation, it's what a journalist "the credibility of whom is untested" heard from some people. So read the PDF and adjust this. Oh, and UNMIK and EULEX went to house twice and found zilch, or they would filed charges.
Haha journalism at best. Did
Haha journalism at best. Did you even read the Dick Marty's report?? All these 'witnesses' (tortured Albanians in Serbian prisons) were apparently lying. Dick Marty said that the 'organ extraction' happened but not at that house, at another house he didn't mention or provide any evidence. So we have one more cycle of lies
Of course they knew, because
Of course they knew, because they investigated the case. As did the Hague Tribunal. This was never hidden. Yet the case never went anywhere because there simple was no credible information to corrobrate the story.
opinion
Kosovo is independent. There is no evindence of the organs.
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