Skip to main content
Kosovo

Kosovo’s premier Hashim Thaci accused of organ trafficking

Kosovo’s premier Hashim Thaci has been named as one of the key players in an organ-trafficking ring according to a Council of Europe report.  Thaci’s former Kosovo Liberation Army is accused of killing Serb prisoners and selling their organs on the black market.

File photo shows Kosovo's PM Thaci speaking during an interview with Reuters in Pristina
File photo shows Kosovo's PM Thaci speaking during an interview with Reuters in Pristina REUTERS/Hazir Reka
Advertising

Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic questioned Thaci's future on Wednesday.
"I have no plans to meet that person (Thaci)," Jeremic said in televised comments following talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

"I do not know what future that person has, if one takes into account the Council of Europe report," Jeremic added.

The report says evidence shows that Serbians, and some Albanian Kosavars, were imprisoned in the wake of the 1998-1999 conflict in Kosovo and subjected to humiliating and degrading treatment. Ultimately they disappeared.

Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian guerrilla group, the Kosovo Liberation Army, secretly imprisoned Serbians in northern Albania, the report claims. The prisoner transfers are said to have taken place before international forces had time to re-establish a semblance of law and order in Kosovo.

The report was penned by Swiss Council of Europe Dick Marty and will be considered by the organisation’s legal affairs committee on Thursday.

The Kosovo government has dismissed the claims as fabrications.

According to the report, prisoners were transferred from Kosovo into Albania where their organs were removed at a clinic near Fushe-Kruje.

Those organs were then "shipped out of Albania and sold to private overseas clinics as part of the international 'black market' of organ-trafficking for transplantation."

The report says that Thaci, one of the KLA leaders during the war, heads a small group of guerrilla leaders that took control of the region’s organised crime since 1998. The crimes cited have also allegedly carried on until today.

 

Daily newsletterReceive essential international news every morning

Keep up to date with international news by downloading the RFI app

Share :
Page not found

The content you requested does not exist or is not available anymore.