AFP/Pristina
Kosovo government yesterday expressed its commitment to cooperate with the EU in the probe into a Council of Europe report linking the prime minister and others to human organ-trafficking.
“The government of Kosovo has been ready from the beginning to co-operate and is co-operating … with international justice,” Deputy Prime Minister Hajredin Kuci told reporters.
“The sooner the truth is known, the easier it will be for Kosovo and its citizens,” he said, adding that his country would not allow itself to be tarnished by “someone’s insinuations”.
Meanwhile , the EU mission in Kosovo (EULEX) announced that it had charged a Turkish and an Israeli citizen over alleged illegal organ transplants at a private clinic in Kosovo.
The Turkish suspect, Yusuf Sonmez, is considered by the Kosovo media as the world’s most infamous organ trafficker.
He was even labeled by the press as the “Turkish Frankenstein” as he is barred from practicing medicine in Turkey.
The charges, which bring the total number of accused to nine, are related to the Medicus Clinic in Pristina, which was closed in November 2008 by Kosovo police after a months-long investigation.
Health Secretary Ilir Rrecaj, who is one of seven suspected locals in the case, was sacked by the health minister for having signed the licence.
The trafficking network came to light after a hint accidentally given by a young Turkish citizen, whose kidney had just been removed in the Medicus clinic for transplant to an Israeli citizen.
He collapsed at the Pristina airport waiting for a flight to Turkey on his way home and required medical assistance.
EULEX said on Friday that it had set up a task force to intensify its probe in the light of the findings of a Council of Europe report linking Prime Minister Hashim Thaci and other high-ranking members of his Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) to human organ trafficking.
The force, to include prosecutors and investigators, will reinforce a preliminary investigation launched by EULEX in late January.
The Council of Europe’s special rapporteur, senator Dick Marty, said in a report released in December that Thaci headed a Kosovo guerrilla faction that controlled secret detention centres where Kosovo Serbs and Albanians considered collaborators were held in Albania.
He reported allegations that human organ trafficking took place in three of these centres in the aftermath of the 1998-99 war between the Kosovo Liberation Army’s (KLA) guerrillas and Serbian forces.
Thaci, who was one of the most prominent leaders of the KLA, has hit back denying the allegations and vowing to sue Marty for libel.
via Gulf Times – Qatar’s top-selling English daily newspaper – Europe/World.
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