Serbian War Crimes Prosecutor Snezana Stanojkovic told Sputnik that her office had highly sensitive information regarding the alleged trafficking in human organs that occurred in Kosovo after a bloody conflict ravaged the republic in the late 1990s
GENOA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st March, 2019) Serbian War Crimes Prosecutor Snezana Stanojkovic told Sputnik that her office had highly sensitive information regarding the alleged trafficking in human organs that occurred in Kosovo after a bloody conflict ravaged the republic in the late 1990s.
Over the recent years, allegations of human organ trafficking in Kosovo have repeatedly emerged. A Council of Europe report by Swiss politician Dick Marty in 2010 alleged that serious crimes had been committed during the 1998-1999 Kosovo War, including trafficking in human organs, and that some members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) captured and tortured Serbians who remained in Kosovo after the end of the armed conflict. Moreover, the report claimed that, in the 1990s, the current president of Kosovo, Hashim Thaci, was the head of a crime ring that was engaged in organ trafficking. The Kosovo government has rejected the allegations.
"This office does have certain information about human organs trafficking in Kosovo," Stanojkovic said when asked if there was any evidence that certain people from the Kosovo president's close circle had been involved in the illegal trafficking in organs of people who went missing in Kosovo and Metohija during the war.
Stanojkovic did not disclose any more details, explaining that the topic was highly sensitive.
Some of Kosovo's prominent politicians are former KLA militants, including Thaci, Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj and parliamentary speaker Kadri Veseli. Haradinaj was acquitted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
In 1999, the armed confrontation between KLA, an ethnic-Albanian militia, which had supported Kosovo's independence since the 1990s, and the Serbian army and police led to NATO airstrikes against what was then Yugoslavia (now Serbia and Montenegro).
Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in 2008. Its sovereignty has been recognized by over 100 UN members. However, Serbia, China, Russia and a number of other countries have not followed suit.
