Kosovo: Investigation into organ trade, protection for witnesses,
EU is in talks with its law and order mission in Kosovo, the EULEX, and is actively negotiating ways to safeguard protection of witnesses says spokeswoman for EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Catherine Ashton.
“Contacts are under way. Marty seeks guarantees for witnesses,” said Ashton’s spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic to the Serbian media.
Kocijancic said that killing of witnesses has been a major problem in prosecuting Albanian war crimes citing case of Ramush Haradinaj.
EULEX now has about 20 investigators and 40 judges, and the EU is ready to send more.
Prosecutors of the EULEX have already begun a preliminary investigation into Albanian organ trade outlined by Council of Europe’s Dick Marty.
According to EULEX prosecutors can start working immediately if they receive the evidence Marty collected.
Skeptics have said that any release of documents by Marty to EULEX would immediately jeopardize all witnesses in the Albanian organ trade.
Albanian Hashim Thaci is the named leader responsible for trafficking in Serbian organs. Swiss authorities have already said that Thaci was implicated in ordering killings of his political opponents.
Head of Serbia’s delegation at the Council of Europe, Dragoljub Micunovic, notes that the decision on who will conduct the investigation on organ trafficking in Kosovo and northern Albania has not yet been taken.
“Dick Marty’s report on human organ trafficking has been adopted, both the US and the EU support the investigation, and Albania will have to cooperate,” Micunovic said.
Russian Permanent Representative to the OSCE Anvar Azimov said that OSCE should support an international investigation of trafficking in human organs in Kosovo.
“We think it important to provide comprehensive support to the independent international investigation, which will establish the truth about the possible involvement of Kosovo top-ranking officials in the cruel and inhumane crimes unprecedented in the modern European history. We think that the OSCE should not stay aside,” Azimov said.
“Hushing, concealment or denial of the truth would be comparable with the crimes by its meanness,” Azimov said.
January 31, 2011