Europe admits to have made failed creation – Kosovo, led by gangsters

26.1.2011 by Atahualpa.

British deputy Mike Hancock strongly supports Marty’s report

Tanja Nikolić-Đaković/Nemanja Vlačo | 26. 01. 2011. - 01:29h | Komentara: 0

‘Europe has made a failed state of Kosovo led by mobsters and criminals’, Mike Hancock, deputy of the British Liberal Democrats said for ‘Blic’ yesterday immediately after the speech at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe which yesterday adopted the resolution requesting international investigation over human body organ trading in Kosovo.

‘It was a great day for the Council of Europe, a day for confirmation of its moral credibility. This decision has opened an important new chapter in investigation of dark parts of the history’, Dragoljub Micunovic, leader of the Serbian delegation in Strasbourg said for ‘Blic’.

‘It was not easy to make decision on adoption of a resolution which requires investigation over horrible crimes committed by the KLA, including Hashim Thaci, actual Kosovo Prime Minister and until recently the hero of creation of an independent state of Kosovo. This decision is an outstanding victory of human rights and humanity’, Micunovic added. The resolution was adopted by 196 votes.

Only 17 votes were against.

Dick Marty’s resolution shall be on agenda in Strasbourg today as well when special attention shall be paid to protection of witnesses and measures for their protection. Dick Marty yesterday got the mandate from the Council of Europe to forward the material and names of witnesses to the EULEX prosecution. Marty is ready to forward the complete investigation material if the EULEX can guarantee safety to witnesses.

‘There shall be investigation and it shall be led against Hashim Thaci, too’, Micunovic said. He is still under strong impression of Hancock’s speech who said during the session that ‘it is hypocrisy to call Marty political primadonna defending his ego’ because ‘he is a man who heard cries from graves’. ‘Everyone has to face the justice if responsible whether that one is a Prime Minister or an ordinary soldier’, Hancock said.

‘For God’s sake do the right thing and send a message – why we have our eyes, ears and mouth covered with hands and almost a decade have not heard, seen or said anything’, Hancock said calling on the deputies to support the resolution.

Other deputies of the Parliamentary of Assembly of the Council of Europe also reacted very negatively to speech by Emira Mehmeti Devaj who said that Marty’s report ‘represents and attempt to change the essence of the conflict in Kosovo’ and that ‘it is necessary for the justice to be over political interests’. Albanian deputy Spetim Idrizi characterized Marty’s report as ‘subversion of truth’ and ‘Serbian-Russian attack’ on the USA, Albania, Kosovo and Hashim Thaci.

This caused even more severe reaction by European parliamentary deputies. The Dutch deputy Tiny Kox requested from Albanian Prime Minister Salji Berisa to apologize for qualifying Dick Marty as ‘an anti-Albanian lobbyist’.

‘It is shameful to call one of our best rapporteurs a racist or an anti-Albanian’, Kox said.

For Jean-Charles Gardetto, author of the resolution on protection of witnesses in Kosovo, Marty’s report is ‘a historical event for the Council of Europe’.

Representative of the group of socialists Klaas de Vries said that ‘the search for truth and justice is duty and obligation of all’.

‘We want an impartial international investigation over all quotations from Dick Marty’s report. This investigation should be supported and given full help. It is also necessary to guarantee safety to witnesses’, he added.

Marie-Louise Beck* of the liberals pointed out that ‘it is important that this report is not abused to bring the independence of Kosovo in question’.
‘That is not the issue. The question is whether during the war a structure which connected organized crime and politics was made. That is why this issue has to be investigated’, she said.

blic

* Marie-Louise Beck, is one of the stupitest womens, around Joschka Fischer,the famoust german taxidriver

A bad week

Criminal accusations and democracy protests hurt Albanians’ good name

Albania and Kosovo

Jan 27th 2011 | from PRINT EDITION

 

 

WHAT a miserable few days for Albanians. In Kosovo their leaders stand accused of criminality on a grand scale. In Albania violence erupted at an opposition rally on January 21st and three protesters were shot dead, apparently by the security forces. Sali Berisha, Albania’s prime minister, accused the opposition, led by Edi Rama, mayor of Tirana, of orchestrating bands of criminals and terrorists. Mr Rama retorted that the prime minister was responsible for a bloodbath and that the interior minister was a socially dangerous worm who should be arrested.

Since Albania has formally applied for membership of the European Union and the EU has invested heavily in a police and justice mission in Kosovo, this is all deeply alarming. On January 26th Miroslav Lajcak, a former Slovak foreign minister who is now the EU’s point man on Balkan affairs, met Albanian leaders in a bid to head off a new round of violence. Yet ever since an election in June 2009 which the opposition claim was rigged by Mr Berisha, normal parliamentary life has ground to a halt. As one consequence, so has Albania’s progress towards the EU.

Kosovo’s progress is non-existent. Its latest problems stem from a report in December by Dick Marty, a former Swiss prosecutor and politician. Drawn up for the Council of Europe, the Marty report claims that Hashim Thaci, acting prime minister of Kosovo, led a mafia network that seized violent control of the heroin trade and was linked to the kidnappings of Serbs and others in Kosovo, some of whom were then murdered in Albania for their organs in 1999. Mr Thaci says the report is full of lies and Serb propaganda.

The report has been criticised by Albanians who side with Mr Thaci on this. But it has devastated Kosovo’s already bad international image. Kosovars point out that previous investigations into the organ-trafficking claims have yielded no results. But this week the Marty report was endorsed by the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe. The task of investigation will now pass to EULEX, the EU’s police mission in Kosovo.

EULEX says that, if Mr Marty has fresh evidence, he should give it to them. He responds that the big problem would be to ensure the safety of witnesses. There is a need to ensure that justice is done, he has said, and not “mock justice”.

The organ-trafficking allegations were first made in a 2008 book written by Carla Del Ponte, former chief prosecutor of the UN’s Yugoslav war-crimes tribunal, and Chuck Sudetic, who worked as an investigator at the tribunal. He now says that, in its current form, EULEX cannot handle such a sensitive investigation, because it has neither an adequate witness-protection programme nor enough security for its IT systems. It also uses local translators who are susceptible to threats or pressure on their families.

As if all this were not bad enough, the Guardian, a British newspaper, reported alleged leaked intelligence documents from KFOR, the NATO force in Kosovo, from around 2004, claiming that Mr Thaci was one of the three biggest fish in organised crime in the region. According to the documents Xhavit Haliti, a bigwig in Kosovo’s politics, was the power behind Mr Thaci. They also suggest that Mr Haliti was involved in prostitution, weapons and drugs smuggling.

Mr Haliti has been linked to the 1997 murder in Albania of Ali Uka, a journalist who criticised the Kosovo Liberation Army, in which both Mr Thaci and Mr Haliti were leading lights. The report says that Mr Uka was brutally disfigured with a bottle and a screwdriver. His roommate at the time was Mr Thaci. The Guardian says Mr Haliti was unavailable for comment, though he was in Strasbourg for the Council of Europe session, where he agreed that EULEX should investigate the organ-trafficking claims but said the fuss over Mr Marty’s report, in which he figures, would die down. Maybe, but the damage to Albania and Kosovo has been done.

http://www.economist.com/node/18013840

Stop Albania’s Self-Destruction

By DANIEL KORSKI

Published: January 26, 2011

• s

One moment Albania is Lonely Planet’s “must-see” destination for 2011, a NATO member whose citizens enjoy visa-free travel into the European Union; the next, government forces are shooting and killing protesters on the streets and the British Foreign Office is warning visitors to avoid large crowds in Tirana.

……………

New York Times

Geschrieben in Balkan (Englisch) | 1 Kommentar »

Serbia: Hooligans attack journalists and insult court

26.1.2011 by Atahualpa.

Djordje Prelic (26) the chief organizer of murder of the French football fan Brice Taton (28) was yesterday sentenced to…»

Geschrieben in Balkan (Englisch) | Keine Kommentare »