11.4.2008 by CrniLabudovi.

Serbs slains for their organs, says ex-U.N. lawyer

• Story Highlights
• Human rights group urges Kosovo authorities to act over ex-U.N. prosecutor’s claims
• Carla del Ponte says in book that Albanian guerrillas killed Serbs and sold organs
• The atrocities allegedly happened at the end of the war in Kosovo in 1999
• Kosovo’s justice minister dismisses the allegations as “fabrications”

PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) — A human rights group has urged Kosovo authorities to investigate claims by a former U.N. war crimes prosecutor that ethnic Albanian guerrillas killed dozens of Serbs and sold their organs at the end of the war in Kosovo.

Carla Del Ponte was prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia from 1999-2007.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said Carla Del Ponte had presented “sufficiently grave evidence” in her newly-published book to warrant an investigation into claims guerrillas took Serbs into Albania, killed them and then sold their organs to international traffickers in 1999.

In a letter dated April 4 and addressed to Kosovo’s prime minister, the rights group called upon Kosovo’s authorities “to determine the veracity” of the claims with counterparts in Albania.

The confidential letter was obtained by The Associated Press on Friday from an international official. Officials from the rights group confirmed they had sent the letter, but declined to comment, saying they wanted to give Kosovo authorities time to respond to the request.

“We consider the circumstantial evidence she presents to be sufficiently grave to warrant further investigation,” Human Rights Watch said in the letter.

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“We urge you to initiate a thorough investigation in cooperation with your Albania counterparts, in order to determine the veracity of Del Ponte’s claim and to ensure anyone found responsible for such crimes is held accountable in a court of law,” it said.

In the letter, the rights group said Del Ponte was told that Kosovo Albanians transported between 100 and 300 people — most of them Serb civilians — by truck from Kosovo into northern Albania in June 1999, as NATO and the United Nations were moving into Kosovo at the end of the war between separatist rebels and Serbian forces.

“Some of the younger, healthier captives were allegedly fed, examined by doctors and never beaten,” the group said in the letter.

They were then transported into facilities near the Albanian town of Burrel, about 90 kilometers (55 miles) north of the capital, Tirana, where “doctors extracted the captives’ internal organs,” Human Rights Watch said.

“Bodies of the victims may be buried near a yellow house nearby a graveyard about 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of Burrel,” the letter says.

It cites Del Ponte saying U.N. investigators inspected the house and found medical equipment used in surgery and traces of blood, but were unable to determine if the blood was human.

According to Del Ponte, high-level members of the guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army were aware of the organ-smuggling operation. Most of the victims were Kosovo Serbs, but they also included women from Kosovo, Albania, Russia and Slavic countries.

Kosovo’s justice minister Nekibe Kelmendi dismissed the allegations as “fabrications.”

“These are pure fabrications by Del Ponte or by Serbia itself,” Kelmendi said. “I have had four private meetings with Carla Del Ponte and she never once mentioned any such allegations.”

She criticized Del Ponte “for writing about issues that were not turned into official charges.”

“If she knew of such cases then she should be charged for withholding evidence and hiding these crimes,” Kelmendi said.

Kelmendi’s ministry was also on the list of authorities who received the letter from the rights watchdog. European Union and U.N. officials in Kosovo were also sent the letter.

Serbia’s war crimes prosecutor has said he will look into the claims. Families of missing Serbs, however, accuse the prosecutor of failing to take action even though they have provided the names of 300 people they accuse of being involved in the kidnapping of Serbs.

Hundreds of Serbs and ethnic Albanians are still missing from Kosovo’s 1998-99 war.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia on Feb. 17 and has been recognized by the United States and the bulk of nations in the European Union. Serbia and its ally Russia oppose Kosovo’s statehood.

CNN

“Carla del Ponte says in book that Albanian guerrillas killed Serbs and sold organs!”

Between End of 1997 until 2000 was the same problem in Albania with albanian children spezial in Tirana an Durres! A lot of people sold her organs (niere) for about 3.000 $ to foreign Doktors and the Albanian Mafia.

Geschrieben in Geschichte - History, Balkan (Englisch) | 1 Kommentar »

11.4.2008 by Lupo.

MEP Van Orden: ‘Not happy’ about Kosovo outcome
Published: Wednesday 9 April 2008

British Conservative MEP and foreign affairs committee member Geoffrey Van Orden believes greater autonomy for Kosovo within Serbia would have been a better solution, strengthening reformists in Serbia and improving Western relations with Russia. He was speaking to EurActiv in an interview.

Geoffrey Van Orden is a British Conservative MEP and a member of the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee.

You have just returned from the NATO summit in Bucharest. There have been some setbacks there regarding the enlargement of the alliance. Could this affect EU enlargement?

NATO enlargement and EU enlargement are of course autonomous processes, but inevitably there is a linkage there. Quite often a country would join NATO when it also has the EU in its sights. I think the NATO summit was disappointing for most people. There are one or two who got something out of it. Putin of course stole the show, although he was not at the summit itself, he was at the subsequent NATO-Russia meeting and of course got a lot of attention from the media. The Greeks of course managed to block the accession of Macedonia. And President Sarkozy got quite a lot out of it as well.

He’s been very keen to promote European Defence Policy, and now in exchange for US backing he made a promise [to send] a few extra troops to Afghanistan and made noises about rejoining the integrated military structure of the NATO alliance. But this is very much on his terms and I’m astonished that the Americans have gone so far now by having to endorse EU defence policy, which I think is detrimental to NATO and is not helpful.

EurAktiv

Interview: no solution to Kosovo without Serbia
In an interview, Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Djelic predicted violence in Kosovo if the will of the Serbians there is not respected. The Harvard-trained Djelic faulted the US for forcing its will on the EU and the Balkans.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
By George Gilson

Wtih his Harvard MBA, work as a partner at financial consultants McCinsey and Company and experience in advising east European governments on privatisation, 44-year-old Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Bozidar Djelic could have been pursuing a highly lucrative career in international finance.
………………
Some 1,300 Serbs were killed by Albanians after Nato arrived, and there was ethnic cleansing in March 2004.

More than 6,000 people were kicked out of their homes, and there are about 250,000 internally displaced Serbs who have been ethnically cleansed from Kosovo,” Djelic underlines. “If people in Kosovo are asking for Serbia to be present, we have to respond.”

Flawed US policy
“It is a very poor policy to have one nationalism [Albanian] completely winning over another. If America wants to regain the moral high ground, it should seek solutions and not impose its will on all, including EU members,” he says.

“It is not possible to have a stable, longterm Kosovo solution without Belgrade being part of it.
…………..

Speroforum

Und auch der Ex-Bundekanzler Schröder sieht heute den Kosovo Krieg als Fehler an und die Kosovo Unabhängigkeit Erklärung ebenso!

Schröder bezeichnet die Anerkennung des Kosovo als Fehler

Geschrieben in Balkan (Englisch), Balkan | Keine Kommentare »