: Pubblicato: 19 Gennaio 2011

America's Gift to Europe

1) Criminal Kosovo : America’s Gift to Europe - by Diana Johnstone

2) NEWS: "Quint must have known", says ex-UN official / Serbian patriarch accuses ex-UN and NATO officials in Kosovo of organ trafficking cover up / “Fascist occupation of Kosovo continues” / Ex-KLA commanders accused of war crimes / KLA reassessed

3) Former Kosovo "Freedom Fighters" charged with war crimes (Global Research / Novosti - 2011-01-07)

Criminal Kosovo : America’s Gift to Europe

By Diana Johnstone

January 10, 2011

U.S. media have given more attention to hearsay allegations of Julian Assange’s sexual encounters with two talkative Swedish women than to an official report accusing Kosovo prime minister Hashim Thaci of running a criminal enterprise which, among almost every other crime in the book, has murdered prisoners in order to sell their vital organs on the world market.

The report by Swiss liberal Dick Marty was mandated two years ago by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). Not to be confused with the European Union, the Council of Europe was founded in 1949 to promote human rights, the rule of law and democracy and has 47 member states (compared to 27 in the EU).

While U.S. legal experts feverishly try to trump up charges they can use to demand extradition of Assange to the United States, to be duly punished for discomfiting the empire, U.S. State Department spokesman Phillip Crowley piously reacted to the Council of Europe allegations by declaring that the United States will continue to work with Thaci since “any individual anywhere in the world is innocent until proven otherwise”.

Everyone, that is, except, among others, Bradley Manning who is in solitary confinement although he has not been found guilty of anything. All the Guantanamo prisoners have been considered guilty, period. The United States is applying the death penalty on a daily basis to men, women and children in Afghanistan and Pakistan who are innocent until proven dead.

Embarrassed supporters of Thaci’s little self-proclaimed state dismiss the accusations by saying that the Marty Report does not prove Thaci’s guilt.

Of course it doesn’t. It can’t. It is a report, not a trial. The report was mandated by the PACE precisely because judicial authorities were ignoring evidence of serious crimes. In her 2008 memoir in Italian La caccia. Io e i criminali di guerra (The Hunt. Me and the War Criminals), the former prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, Carla del Ponte, complained that she had been prevented from carrying out a thorough investigation of reports of organ extraction from Serb and other prisoners carried out by the “Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)” in Albania. Indeed, rumors and reports of those atrocities, carried out in the months following the occupation of Kosovo by NATO-led occupation forces, have been studiously ignored by all relevant judicial authorities.

The Marty report claims to have uncovered corroborating evidence, including testimony by witnesses whose lives would be in danger if their names were revealed. The conclusion of the report is not and could not be a verdict, but a demand to competent authorities to undertake judicial proceedings capable of hearing all the evidence and issuing a verdict.

Skepticism about atrocities

It is always prudent to be skeptical about atrocity stories circulating in wartime. History shows many examples of totally invented atrocity stories that serve to stir up hatred of the enemy during wartime, such as the widely circulated World War I reports of the Germans “cutting off the hands of Belgian babies”. Western journalists and politicians abandoned all prudent skepticism regarding the wild tales that were spread of Serb atrocities used to justify the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia. Personally, my skepticism extends to all such stories, regardless of the identity of the alleged perpetrators, and I have refrained for years from writing about the Albanian organ transplant stories for that reason. I never considered Carla del Ponte a reliable source, but rather a gullible and self-aggrandizing woman who had been selected by the U.S. sponsors of the ICTY because they thought they could manipulate her. No doubt the sponsors of the Tribunal she was working for, which was set up by and for the United States and NATO allies in order to justify their choice of sides in the Yugoslav civil wars, would have called a halt before she could stray from her assigned path to stick her nose into crimes committed by America’s Albanian protégés. But that does not prove that the alleged crimes actually were committed.

However, the Marty report goes beyond vague rumors to make specific allegations against the KLA’s “Drenica group” led by Hashim Thaci. Despite refusal of Albanian authorities to cooperate, there is ample proof that the KLA operated a chain of “safe houses” on Albanian territory during and after the 1999 NATO war against Serbia, using them to hold, interrogate, torture and sometimes murder prisoners. One of these safe houses, belonging to a family identified by the initial “K”, was cited by Carla del Ponte and media reports as “the yellow house” (since painted white). To quote the Marty Report (paragraph 147):

“There are substantial elements of proof that a small number of KLA captives, including some of the abducted ethnic Serbs, met their death in Rripe, at or in the vicinity of the K. house. We have learned about these deaths not only through the testimonies of former KLA soldiers who said they had participated in detaining and transporting the captives while they were alive, but also through the testimonies of persons who independently witnessed the burial, disinterment, movement and reburial of the captives’ corpses (…)”

An undetermined but apparently small number of prisoners were transferred in vans and trucks to an operating site near Tirana international airport, from which fresh organs could be flown rapidly to recipients.

“The drivers of these vans and trucks – several of whom would become crucial witnesses to the patterns of abuse described – saw and heard captives suffering greatly during the transports, notably due to the lack of a proper air supply in their compartment of the vehicle, or due to the psychological torment of the fate that they supposed awaited them” (paragraph 155).

Captives described in the report as “victims of organised crime” included “persons whom we found were taken into central Albania to be murdered immediately before having their kidneys removed in a makeshift operating clinic” (paragraph 156).

These captives “undoubtedly endured a most horrifying ordeal in the custody of their KLA captors. According to source testimonies, the captives ‘filtered’ into this final subset were initially kept alive, fed well and allowed to sleep, and treated with relative restraint by KLA guards and henchmen who would otherwise have beaten them up indiscriminately” (paragraph 157).

“The testimonies on which we based our findings spoke credibly and consistently of a methodology by which all of the captives were killed, usually by a gunshot to the head, before being operated on to remove one or more of their organs. We learned that this was principally a trade in ‘cadaver kidneys’, i.e. the kidneys were extracted posthumously; it was not a set of advanced surgical procedures requiring controlled clinical conditions and, for example, the extensive use of anaesthetic” (paragraph 162).

Skepticism about “liberation”

The Marty report also recalls what is common knowledge in Europe, namely that Hashim Thaci and his “Drenica Group” are notorious criminals. While “liberated” Kosovo sinks ever further into poverty, they have amassed fortunes in various aspects of illicit trade, notably enslaving women for prostitution and controlling illegal narcotics across Europe.

“Notably, in confidential reports spanning more than a decade, agencies dedicated to combating drug smuggling in at least five countries have named Hashim Thaci and other members of his “Drenica Group” as having exerted violent control over the trade in heroin and other narcotics” (paragraph 66).

“Similarly, intelligence analysts working for NATO, as well as those in the service of at least four independent foreign Governments, made compelling findings through their intelligence-gathering related to the immediate aftermath of the conflict in 1999. Thaci was commonly identified, and cited in secret intelligence reports, as the most dangerous of the KLA’s ‘criminal bosses’” (paragraph 67).

The leftists who fell hook, line and sinker for the “war to rescue the Kosovars from genocide” propaganda that justified NATO’s debut as aggressive bomber/invader in 1999 readily accepted the identification of the “Kosovo Liberation Army” as a national liberation movement deserving their support. Isn’t it part of romantic legend for revolutionaries to rob banks for their cause? Leftists assume such criminal activities are merely a means to the end of political independence. But what if political independence is in reality the means to sanctuarize criminal activities?

Assassinating policemen, the KLA specialty prior to being given Kosovo by NATO, is an ambiguous activity. Is the target “political oppression”, as claimed, or simply law enforcement?

What have Thaci and company done with their “liberation”? First of all, they allowed their American sponsors to build a huge military base, Camp Bondsteel, on Kosovo territory, without asking permission from anyone. Then, behind a smokescreen of talk of building democracy, they have terrorized ethnic minorities, eliminated their political rivals, fostered rampant crime and corruption, engaged in electoral fraud, and ostentatiously enriched themselves thanks to the criminal activities that constitute the real economy.

The Marty Report recalls what happened when Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, under NATO threat of wiping out his country, agreed to withdraw from Kosovo and allow a U.N. force called KFOR (quickly taken over by NATO) to occupy Kosovo.

“First, the withdrawal of the Serb security forces from Kosovo had ceded into the hands of various KLA splinter groups, including Thaci’s “Drenica Group”, effectively unfettered control of an expanded territorial area in which to carry out various forms of smuggling and trafficking” (paragraph 84).

“KFOR and UNMIK were incapable of administering Kosovo’s law enforcement, movement of peoples, or border control, in the aftermath of the NATO bombardment in 1999. KLA factions and splinter groups that had control of distinct areas of Kosovo (villages, stretches of road, sometimes even individual buildings) were able to run organised criminal enterprises almost at will, including in disposing of the trophies of their perceived victory over the Serbs” (paragraph 85).

“Second, Thaci’s acquisition of a greater degree of political authority (Thaci having appointed himself Prime Minister of the Provisional Government of Kosovo) had seemingly emboldened the “Drenica Group” to strike out all the more aggressively at perceived rivals, traitors, and persons suspected of being “collaborators” with the Serbs” (paragraph 86).

In short, NATO drove out the existing police, turning the province of Kosovo over to violent gangsters. But this was not an accident. Hashim Thaci was not just a gangster who took advantage of the situation. He had been hand-picked by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and her right-hand man, James Rubin, for the job.

“You ought to be in movies...”

Until February 1999, Hashim Thaci’s only claim to fame was in Serbian police records, where he was wanted for various violent crimes. Then suddenly, at a French chateau called Rambouillet, he was thrust into the world spotlight by his American handlers. It is one of the most bizarre twists to the whole tragi-comic Kosovo saga.

Ms Albright was eager to use the ethnic conflict in Kosovo to make a display of U.S. military might by bombing the Serbs, in order to reassert U.S. dominance of Europe via NATO. But some European NATO country leaders thought it politically necessary to make at least a pretense of seeking a negotiated solution to the Kosovo problem before bombing. And so a fake “negotiation” was staged at Rambouillet, designed by the United States to get the Serbs to say no to an impossible ultimatum, in order to claim that the humanitarian West had no choice but to bomb.

For that, they needed a Kosovo Albanian who would play their game.

Belgrade sent a large multi-ethnic delegation to Rambouillet, ready to propose a settlement giving Kosovo broad autonomy. On the other side was a purely ethnic Albanian delegation from Kosovo including several leading local intellectuals experienced in such negotiations, including the internationally recognized leader of the Albanian separatist movement in Kosovo, Ibrahim Rugova who, it was assumed, would lead the “Kosovar” delgation.

But to the general surprise of observers, the seasoned intellectuals were shoved aside, and leadership of the delegation was taken over by a young man, Hashim Thaci, known in law-enforcement circles as “the Snake”.

The American stage-managers chose Thaci for obvious reasons. While the older Kosovo Albanians risked actually negotiating with the Serbs, and thus reaching an agreement that would prevent war, Thaci owed everything to the United States, and would do as he was told. Moreover, putting a “wanted” criminal at the top of the delegation was an affront to the Serbs that would help scuttle negotiations. And finally, the Thaci image appealed to the Americans’ idea of what a “freedom fighter” should look like.

Albright’s closest aide, James Rubin, acted as talent scout, gushing over Thaci’s good looks, telling him he was so handsome he should be in Hollywood. Indeed, Thaci did not look like a Hollywood gangster, Edward G. Robinson style, but a clean-cut hero with a vague resemblance to the actor Robert Stack. Joe Biden is said to have complained that Madeleine Albright was “in love” with Thaci. Image is everything, after all, especially when the United States is casting its own Pentagon superproduction, “Saving the Kosovars”, in order to redesign the Balkans, with its own “independent” satellite states.

The pretext for the 1999 war was to “save the Kosovars” (the name assumed by the Albanian population of that Serbian province, to give the impression that it was a country and that they were the rightful inhabitants) from an imaginary threat of “genocide”. The official U.S. position was to respect the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia. But it was always quite obvious that behind the scenes, the United States had made a deal with Thaci to give him Kosovo as part of the destruction of Yugoslavia and the crippling of Serbia. The chaos that followed the withdrawal of Yugoslav security forces enabled the KLA gangs to take over and the United States to build Camp Bondsteel.

Cheered on by a virulent Albanian lobby in the United States, Washington has defied international law, violated its own commitments (the agreement ending the 1999 war called for Serbia to police Kosovo’s borders, which was never allowed), and ignored muted objections from European allies to sponsor the transformation of the poor Serbian province into an ethnic Albanian “independent state”. Since unilaterally declaring independence in February 2008, the failed statelet has been recognized only by 72 out of 192 U.N. members, including 22 of the European Union’s 27 members.

EULEX versus Clan Loyalty

A few months later, the European Union set up a “European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo” (EULEX) intended to take over judicial authority in the province from the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) that had ostensibly exercised such functions after NATO drove out the Serbs. The very establishment of EULEX was proof that the EU’s recognition of Kosovo’s independence was unjustified and dishonest. It was an admission that Kosovo, after being delivered to KLA bands (some in war against each other), was unable to provide even a semblance of law and order, and thus in no way prepared to be “an independent state”.

Of course the West will never admit this, but it was the complaints of the Serb minority in the 1980s that they could not count on protection by police or law courts, then run by the majority ethnic Albanian communist party, that led to the Serbian government’s limitation of Kosovo’s autonomy, portrayed in the West as a gratuitous persecution motivated by racial hatred of Hitlerian proportions.

The difficulties of obtaining justice in Kosovo are basically the same now as they were then – with the difference that the Serbian police understood the Albanian language, whereas the UNMIK and EULEX internationals are almost entirely dependent on local Albanian interpreters, whose veracity they are unable to check.

The Marty Report describes the difficulties of crime investigation in Kosovo:

“The structure of Kosovar Albanian society, still very much clan orientated, and the absence of a true civil society have made it extremely difficult to set up contacts with local sources. This is compounded by fear, often to the point of genuine terror, which we have observed in some of our informants immediately upon broaching the subject of our inquiry.

“The entrenched sense of loyalty to one’s clansmen, and the concept of honour … rendered most ethnic Albanian witnesses unreachable for us. Having seen two prominent prosecutions undertaken by the ICTY leading to the deaths of so many witnesses, and ultimately a failure to deliver justice, a Parliamentary Assembly Rapporteur with only paltry resources in comparison was hardly likely to overturn the odds of such witnesses speaking to us directly.

“Numerous persons who have worked for many years in Kosovo, and who have become among the most respected commentators on justice in the region, counseled us that organized criminal networks of Albanians (‘the Albanian mafia’) in Albania itself, in neighbouring territories including Kosovo and ‘the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’, and in the Diaspora, were probably more difficult to penetrate than the Cosa Nostra; even low-level operatives would rather take a jail term of decades, or a conviction for contempt, than turn in their clansmen.”

A second report submitted this month to the Council of Europe by rapporteur Jean-Charles Gardetto on witness protection in war crimes trials for former Yugoslavia notes that there is no witness protection law in Kosovo and, more seriously, no way to protect witnesses that might testify against fellow ethnic Albanians.

“In the most serious cases, witnesses are able to testify anonymously. However, it was made clear to the rapporteur that these measures are useless as long as the witness is physically in Kosovo, where everybody knows everybody else. Most witnesses are immediately recognised by the defence when they deliver their testimony, despite all the anonymity measures.”
“There are many limitations to the protection arrangements currently available, not least because Kosovo has a population of less than two million with very tight-knit communities. Witnesses are often perceived as betraying their community when they give evidence, which inhibits possible witnesses from coming forward. Furthermore, many people do not believe that they have a moral or legal duty to testify as a witness in criminal cases.
“Moreover, when a witness does come forward, there is a real threat of retaliation. This may not necessarily put them in direct danger, losing their job for example, but there are also examples of key witnesses being murdered. The trial of Ramush Haradinaj, the former leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army, well illustrates this. Mr. Haradinaj was indicted by the ICTY for crimes committed during the war in Kosovo but was subsequently acquitted. In its judgment, the Tribunal highlighted the difficulties that it had had in obtaining evidence from the 100 prosecution witnesses. Thirty-four of them were granted protection measures and 18 had to be issued with summonses. A number of witnesses who were going to give evidence at the trial were murdered. These included Sadik and Vesel Muriqi, both of whom had been placed under a protection program by the ICTY.”

Europe’s Dilemma

Naturally, European accomplices in putting the Thaci gang in charge of Kosovo have been quick to dismiss the Marty report. Tony Blair apologist and former Labour minister Dennis MacShane wrote in The Independent (UK) that, “There is not one single name or a single witness to the allegations that Thaci was involved in the harvesting of human organs from murdered victims.” To someone unfamiliar with the circumstances and with the report, that may sound like a valid objection. But Marty has made it clear that he can supply names of witnesses to competent judicial authorities. Thaci himself acknowledged that they exist when he stated that he would publish the names of Marty’s witnesses – a statement understood as a death threat by those familiar with the Pristina scene.

One of the most prominent Europeans to hope that the Marty report will disappear is the French media humanitarian Bernard Kouchner, until recently Sarkozy’s foreign minister, who officially ran Kosovo as the first head of UNMIK after the NATO occupation. Contrary to Kouchner’s protests of ignorance, the UNMIK police chief in 2000 and 2001, Canadian Captain Stu Kellock, has called it “impossible” that Kouchner was not aware of organized crime in Kosovo. The first time a reporter queried Kouchner about the organ transplant accusations, a few months ago, Kouchner responded with a loud horse laugh, before telling the reporter to go have his head examined. After the Marty report, Kouchner merely repeated his “skepticism”, and called for an investigation… by EULEX.

Other NATO defenders have taken the same line. One investigation calls for another, and so on. Investigating the charges against the KLA is beginning to look like the Middle East peace process.

The Marty Report itself concludes with a clear call on EULEX to “to persevere with its investigative work, without taking any account of the offices held by possible suspects or of the origin of the victims, doing everything to cast light on the criminal disappearances, the indications of organ trafficking, corruption and the collusion so often complained of between organized criminal groups and political circles” and “to take every measure necessary to ensure effective protection for witnesses and to gain their trust”.

This is a tall order, considering that EULEX is ultimately dependent on EU governments deeply involved in ignoring Kosovo Albanian crime for over a decade. Still, some of the most implicated personalities, such as Kouchner, are nearing the end of their careers, and there are many Europeans who consider that things have gone much too far, and that the Kosovo cesspool must be cleaned up.

EULEX is already prosecuting an organ trafficking ring in Kosovo. In November 2008, a young Turkish man who had just had a kidney removed collapsed at Pristina airport, which led police to raid the nearby Medicus clinic where a 74-year-old Israeli was convalescing from implantation of the young man’s kidney. The Israeli had allegedly paid 90,000 euros for the illegal implant, while the young Turk, like other desperately poor foreigners lured to Pristina by false promises, was cheated of the money promised. The trial is currently underway in Pristina of seven defendants charged with involvement in the illegal Medicus organ trafficking racket, including top members of the Kosovo Albanian medical profession. Still at large are Dr. Yusuf Sonmez, a notorious international organ trafficker, and Moshe Harel, an Israeli of Turkish origin accused of organizing the illicit international organ trade. Israel is known to be a prime market for organs because of Jewish religious restrictions that severely limit the number of Israeli donors.

The Marty Report notes that the information it has obtained “appears to depict a broader, more complex organized criminal conspiracy to source human organs for illicit transplant, involving co-conspirators in at least three different foreign countries besides Kosovo, enduring over more than a decade. In particular, we found a number of credible, convergent indications that the organ-trafficking component of the post-conflict detentions described in our report is closely related to the contemporary case of the Medicus Clinic, not least through prominent Kosovar Albanian and international personalities who feature as co-conspirators in both.”

But EULEX prosecution of the Medicus case does not automatically mean that the European judicial authorities in Kosovo will pursue the even more criminal organ trafficking denounced in the Marty Report. One obstacle is that the alleged crimes took place on the territory of Albania, and so far Albanian authorities have been uncooperative, to say the least. A second inhibition is fear that the attempt to prosecute leading KLA figures would lead to unrest. Indeed, on January 9, several hundred Albanians carrying Albanian flags (not the Western-imposed flag of Kosovo) demonstrated in Mitrovica against the Marty report shouting “UCK, UCK” (KLA in Albanian). Still, EULEX has indicted two former KLA commanders for war crimes committed on Albanian territory in 1999 when they allegedly tortured prisoners, ethnic Albanians from Kosovo either suspected of “collaborating” with legal Serb authorities or because they were political opponents of the KLA.

A striking and significant political fact that emerges from the Marty report is that:

“The reality is that the most significant operational activities undertaken by members of the KLA – prior to, during, and in the immediate aftermath of the conflict – took place on the territory of Albania, where the Serb security forces were never deployed” (paragraph 36).

Thus, to a very large extent, the Serbian province of Kosovo was the object of a foreign invasion from across its border, by Albanian nationalists keen on creating “Greater Albania”, and aided in this endeavor by diaspora lobbies and, decisively, NATO bombing. Far from being an “aggressor” in its own historic province, Serbia was the victim of a major two-pronged foreign invasion.

America’s disposable puppets

NATO could not have waged a ground war against Serbian forces without suffering casualties. So it waged a 78-day air war, ravaging Serbia’s infrastructure. To save his country from threatened annihilation, Milosevic gave in. For its ground force, the United States chose the KLA. The KLA was no match for Serbian forces on the ground, but it aided the United States/NATO war in peculiar ways.

The United States provided KLA fighters on the ground with GPS devices and satellite telephones to enable them to spot Serb targets for bombing (very inefficiently, as the NATO bombs missed almost all their military targets). The KLA in some places ordered Kosovo Albanian civilians to flee across the border to Albania or to ethnic Albanian parts of Macedonia, where photographers were waiting to enrich the imagery of a population persecuted by Serb “ethnic cleansing” – an enormous propaganda success. And crucially, before the NATO bombing, the KLA pursued a strategy of provocation, murdering policemen and civilians, including disobedient Albanians, designed to commit acts of repression that could be used as a pretext for NATO intervention. Thaci even boasted subsequently of the success of this strategy.

Thaci has played the role assigned to him by the empire. Still, considering the history of American disposal of collaborators who have outlived their usefulness (Ngo Dinh Diem, Noriega, Saddam Hussein…), he has reasons to be uneasy.

Thaci’s uneasiness could be sharpened by a recent trip to the region by William Walker, the U.S. agent who in 1999 created the main pretext for the NATO bombing campaign by inflating casualties from a battle between Serb police and KLA fighters in the village of Racak into a massacre of civilians, “a crime against humanity” perpetrated by “people with no value for human life”. Walker, whose main professional experience was in Central America during the Reagan administration’s bloody fight against revolutionary movements in Nicaragua and El Salvador, had been imposed by the United States as head of a European mission ostensibly mandated to monitor a cease-fire between Serb forces and the KLA. But in fact, he and his British deputy used the mission to establish close contacts with the KLA in preparation for joint war against the Serbs. The grateful gangster regime has named a street in Pristina after him;

In between receiving a decoration in Kosovo and honorary citizenship in Albania, Walker took political positions that could make both Thaci and EULEX nervous. Walker expressed support for Albin Kurti, the young leader of the radical nationalist “Self-Determination” movement (Vetëvendosje), which is gaining support with its advocacy of independence from EU governance as well as in favor of “natural Albania”, meaning a Greater Albania composed of Albania, Kosovo and parts of southern Serbia, much of Macedonia, a piece of Montenegro and even northern Greece. Was Walker on a talent-scouting mission in view of replacing the increasingly disgraced Thaci? If Kurti is the new favorite, a U.S.-chosen replacement could cause even more trouble in the troubled Balkans.

The West, that is, the United States, the European Union and NATO may be able to agree on a “curse on both their houses” approach, concluding that the Serbs they persecuted and the Albanians they helped are all barbarians, unworthy of their benevolent intervention. What they will never admit is that they chose, and to a large extent created, the wrong side in a war for which they bear criminal responsibility. And whose devastating consequences continue to be borne by the unfortunate inhabitants of the region, whatever their linguistic and cultural identity.

Diana Johnstone is author of Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions.

She can be reached at diana.josto@...

=== 2: NEWS ===

http://www.b92.net/eng/news/politics-article.php?yyyy=2011&mm=01&dd=04&nav_id=71917

Politika/Tanjug News Agency - January 4, 2011

"Quint must have known", says ex-UN official

BELGRADE: The so-called Quint countries "must have known about the allegations made in the recent report by Council of Europe (CoE) Rapporteur Dick Marty".
The five countries - U.S., Britain, Germany, France and Italy - had access to information, resources and a long history of work with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), former U.S. diplomat and UN Regional Representative in northern Kosovo Gerard Gallucci told Belgrade's Politika newspaper in an interview.
The Marty report named now Kosovo Albanian PM Hashim Thaci and other former members of the KLA of kidnapping Serb and other civilians and selling their organs in the black market.
"Regardless of the claims about organ trafficking, everyone knows about the involvement of some of the top Kosovo leaders in transnational crime and corruption. International officials ignored these problems so as not to provoke the ethnic Albanians and prevent them from creating even bigger problems," Gallucci stated, according to the newspaper.
"It is also common knowledge that, with their desire to create a greater Albania, the Kosovo Albanians have often been a threat to regional stability," Gallucci said.
As far as political influence is concerned, many have rightfully noticed that Marty's report sheds a very bad light on Kosovo and its leadership, he added.
"I do not expect any improvement in the suspended process of Kosovo's recognition, and I believe that Belgrade's political position in any kind of dialogue with Priština will be strengthened," Gallucci assessed.
According to him, the Quint countries, particularly the U.S., put all their trust in Hashim Thaci and they do not have any acceptable alternative for him.
"For some reason, perhaps because he is harder to control, they did nothing to help Ramush Haradinaj (former prime minister and another KLA leader), who is an authentic leader of Kosovo Albanians, smarter and more pragmatic than most others. But some believe that the Americans are behind the efforts to keep him out of Kosovo," Gallucci was quoted as saying.
The former UN administrator in Kosovo explained that it was for this reason that he believed that Thaci would 'survive' as prime minister, "which will prevent disorder".
"But what Marty's allegations can do is make the western Europeans finally confront the American hardline towards the Serbs. It is possible that they, excluding the British, will be more ready for a compromise with Belgrade, which implies the possibility of granting a special status to northern Kosovo," Gallucci said.

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http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/world/breakingnews/serbian-patriarch-accuses-ex-un-and-nato-officials-in-kosovo-of-organ-trafficking-cover-up-112942894.html

Associated Press - January 5, 2011

Serbian patriarch accuses ex-UN and NATO officials in Kosovo of organ trafficking cover up

BELGRADE, Serbia: The head of the Serbian Orthodox Church accused former U.N. and NATO administrators of Kosovo on Wednesday of covering up reports of an alleged illegal human organs trade in the former Serbian province.
Patriarch Irinej said in his Orthodox Christmas address that the international officials "certainly knew what was happening on the field" when they ran Kosovo after the war for secession ended in 1999.
Serbs like many other Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7.
"The terrible crime against the innocent Serbian victims of organ trafficking took place with calm and in many cases complicit silence of the international community," Irinej said. "But, the truth and God's justice always have the last say."
Swiss Senator Dick Marty, a Council of Europe investigator, last month released a report alleging that kidneys and other organs were removed from Serbs and other non-Albanians in detention facilities run by rebel Kosovo Albanians in neighbouring Albania in 1999.
Albanian officials in Kosovo and Albania have vehemently denied the accusations.
Kosovo — which declared independence from Serbia in 2008 — came under U.N. and NATO administration after a 1999 NATO-led air war halted former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic's crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists there. The U.N. handed over the administration of Kosovo to the European Union in 2008.
The influential Serbian Orthodox Church considers Kosovo the cradle of the Serbian state and religion, and has its headquarters in Kosovo where ethnic Albanians comprise about 90 per cent of population.

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http://www.b92.net/eng/news/politics-article.php?yyyy=2011&mm=01&dd=06&nav_id=71955

Tanjug News Agency - January 6, 2011

“Fascist occupation of Kosovo continues”

BELGRADE: Metropolitan Amfilohije of Montenegro and the Littoral has stated that fascist occupation of the southern Serbian province continues to this day.
He said that current situation in Kosovo "is actually the continuation of the Nazi-Fascist occupation from the WWII, and which is even more tragic, with longer-term consequences."
“The church in Kosovo is facing many challenges, the first and foremost of which is Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence,” he told Belgrade-based daily Politika.
According to him, the consequences of this violent act are torn down temples, stolen church and national property, hundreds of Orthodox Serbs exiled from their centuries-old homes, no conditions for their return, increasing poverty and existential threats to the remaining Serbs and all of other Kosovo inhabitants.
....

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http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/01/08/39072370.html

Voice of Russia - January 8, 2011

Ex-KLA commanders accused of war crimes

A prosecutor for the EU mission in Kosovo has accused two former commanders of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army of war crimes.
Reports from Pristine say Sabit Jechi and Riza Aliya are charged with brutalizing civilians in concentration camps on the territory of Albania and carrying out executions for dissent.
The accusation came less than a month after the publication of a report by Dick Marti from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe that leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army, including the incumbent Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, were implicated in trading in human organs in Kosovo.

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http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/01/08/39088042.html

Voice of Russia - January 8, 2011

KLA reassessed

In February 2008, a separatist campaign by the Kosovo Liberation Army ended in Kosovo’s unilateral sovereignty declaration. Most nations in the European Union promptly extended diplomatic recognition to Kosovo.
But in the three years since, many have experienced something of a sobering effect. Indeed, what else to expect after many Kosovo leaders were exposed as massive embezzlers of European funds and kingpins of Europe-wide smuggling and drug trafficking rings?
A few weeks ago, a report by the Swiss delegate of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Dick Marty accused the former KLA commander and the current Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci of running illegal trade in human transplant material.
And earlier this week, the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo, or EULEX, accused the former KLA officers Sabit Geci and Riza Alija of committing war crimes during the Kosovo conflict, including mass arbitrary killings and torture.
The Russian Balkans expert Dr. Alexander Karasev explains why it is only now that Europe starts seeing the KLA as criminals:
Serbia and the Kosovo Serbs have been exposing the KLA all along. In more recent years, some of the former KLA leaders openly confessed to eliminating people who could testify against them at The Hague. Europe, however, continued to turn a blind eye to the criminal gang that was the KLA and its successors in Kosovo. It needed this gang to help it undermine and destroy Federal Yugoslavia.
Now that the need is over, the KLA are no longer cherished friends in European circles. The Kosovo Serbs, meantime, continue to suffer discrimination at the hands of separatists who fought for the KLA.

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http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22765


Former Kosovo "Freedom Fighters" charged with war crimes
Global Research, January 13, 2011
Novosti - 2011-01-07
European prosecutors charged two former top Kosovo Albanian guerrillas with war crimes during the 1998-99 conflict, according to a definitive indictment obtained by AFP Friday. The former commander of the military police for the guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) Sabit Geci, 52, and Riza Alija, 50, were charged with “war crimes against (the) civilian population” committed in two KLA camps in neighbouring Albania, the indictment said. The indictment, seen by AFP in its Albanian version, was issued by EULEX, the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo. It was filed for EULEX by US prosecutor Robert L. Dean, said the camps in the northern towns of Kukes and Cahan set up by the KLA were “logistic, training and supply” sites. However, the two accused used them to detain “civilians and persons who were not taking part in the war,” it said. It was not clear when the trial would start. The war between KLA guerrillas and Serbian forces loyal to then Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic ended after the June 1999 NATO air campaign ousted Serbian forces from Kosovo. Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in February 2008 and has so far been recognised by 72 countries, despite Belgrade’s strong opposition. The 3,000-member EULEX mission was launched in December 2008 to enforce the rule of law in the newly declared country and supervise its police, customs and judiciary. EULEX has the power to step in and take on cases that the local judiciary and police are unable to handle because of their sensitive nature. The indictment comes at a time when Pristina is still reeling from allegations of atrocities committed by the KLA in a report by the Council of Europe’s envoy Dick Marty. Marty linked Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci and other senior KLA commanders to organ trafficking and organised crime. Thaci has denied the allegations, condemning them as a smear campaign. One of the indicted men, Geci is mentioned in Marty’s report as suspected of the “killing of a civilian in Kukes who was beaten and shot.” According to Dean’s indictment, the two men accused allegedly detained Kosovars who fled the conflict and were suspected of collaborating with the then Serbian regime or had “political views that differed from the KLA.” Geci and Alija were “directly involved in ordering and took part in mistreating persons kept in these detention centres,” from the end of March or beginning of April to June 1999, the document said. Civilians “were beaten regularly and were hit with batons and nightsticks (truncheons), kicked, mistreated and verbally abused,” it added. “They were kept in filthy and… unhealthy conditions…. They were denied food, water and medical treatment,” the indictment said. The indictment described an incident in Kukes where two detainees were ordered to put on bulletproof jackets and afterwards “were shot by a firing squad” as a way of torture. A EULEX pre-trial judge has already decided that the Kosovo judiciary has the jurisdiction over the case despite the alleged war crimes having taken place in Albania. Geci had been arrested by European police in May and Alija in June. The EULEX prosecution provided testimonies of around 20 detainees — whose identities were not revealed — who had said they has suffered great physical and psychological trauma “because of the conditions they were being kept and as the result of beating and torture.” Their names are coded in a special, confidential annex of the indictment as a way for the court to keep their identities secure. Following the release of Marty’s report, Thaci warned that those “fake patriots” in Kosovo who had cooperated with the Council of Europe envoy in his investigation might face consequences. “These names are known and they will be made public very quickly,” Thaci said in a weekend interview with Kosovo private TV station Klan.

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