Komsomolskaya Pravda
May 13, 2008
Kosovo killers. Part 1
After Kosovo declared independence, the Prosecutor of
the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former
Yugoslavia (ICTY) Carla Del Ponte raucously quit her
position at The Hague.
She slammed the door so loudly behind her that the
ceiling plaster cracked at parliaments across the
European Union.
After her exile to Argentina as Switzerland's
ambassador, Ponte said the new Kosovo was run by
butchers who made a fortune trafficking organs
extracted from kidnapped Serbs.
In her book titled, "The Hunt: Me and the War
Criminals," Ponte describes how a black organ market
formed during the Kosovo War. Meanwhile, she says, the
European Union played dumb, paying no attention to the
crimes. KP journalists went to Kosovo to learn more
about the crimes.
Iron Carla's revelation
Hardly a day goes by without fragments of Ponte's book
hitting Belgrade newspapers. Here is a commonly quoted
section that details the horrors of Kosovo organ
trafficking:
"According to the journalists' sources, who were only
identified as Kosovo Albanians, some of the younger
and fitter prisoners were visited by doctors and were
never hit. They were transferred to other detention
camps in Burrel and the neighboring area, one of which
was a barracks behind a yellow house 20 km behind the
town.
"One room inside this yellow house, the journalists
said, was kitted out as a makeshift operating theater,
and it was here that surgeons transplanted the organs
of prisoners. These organs, according to the sources,
were then sent to Rinas airport, Tirana, to be sent to
surgical clinics abroad to be transplanted to paying
patients.
"One of the informers had personally carried out a
shipment to the airport. The victims, deprived of a
kidney, were then locked up again, inside the
barracks, until the moment they were killed for other
vital organs. In this way, the other prisoners in the
barracks were aware of the fate that awaited them, and
according to the source, pleaded, terrified to be
killed immediately.
"Among the prisoners who were taken to these barracks
were women from Kosovo, Albania, Russia and other
Slavic countries. Two of the sources said that they
helped to bury the corpses of the dead around the
yellow house and in a neighboring cemetery. According
to the sources, the organ smuggling was carried out
with the knowledge and active involvement of middle
and high ranking involvement from the KLA (ed. Kosovo
Liberation Army).
"A few months after [October 2002] the investigators
of the tribunal and UNMIK reached central Albania and
the yellow house which the journalists sources had
revealed as the place where the prisoners were killed
to transplant their organs. The journalists and the
Albanian prosecutor accompanied the investigators to
the site.
"The house was now white. The owner denied it had ever
been repainted even though investigators found traces
of yellow along the base of its walls. Inside the
investigators found pieces of gauze, a used syringe
and two plastic IV bags encrusted with mud and empty
bottles of medicine, some of which was of a muscle
relaxant often used in surgical operations. The
application of a chemical substance revealed to the
scientific team traces of blood on the walls and on
the floor of a room inside the house, except for in a
clean area of the floor sized 180x60cm.
"The investigators were not able to determine whether
the traces they found were of human blood. The sources
did not indicate the position of the grave of the
presumed victims and so we did not find the bodies."
However, Serbian journalists began conducting their
own investigations into the purported organ
trafficking.
Correspondents from the Press newspaper were said to
have found the barracks described by Ponte. However,
they refused to share detailed information with KP.
The tabloid published several photos related to the
incident, but many local media representatives believe
their authenticity is dubious.
"They wanted to fabricate this huge story, but they
ended up with a piece of crap," said Aleksandr
Bechich, deputy chief editor of the Pravda opposition
newspaper. "Press has been caught lying on more than
one occasion. But there is truth to the article.
"Many Serbs heard about these crimes even before the
book's publication. Serbia's Justice Minister Vladan
Batich gave Ponte numerous materials about executed
and kidnapped Serbs. There was also evidence, but no
one was sure if the organs had actually been
trafficked.
"I originally heard about this 5 years ago from
Serbia's former head of Military Intelligence. But no
one listened to special agents at the time. The
Serbian special forces had documents that certified
that medical equipment had been brought to camps in
Albania.
"This evidence was given to Western intelligence
agencies. 'We can't work in Albania,' they said. 'Help
us with this.' But no one did a thing.
"U.S. and German special forces knew that Serbs had
been kidnapped in 1999. As they didn't do anything to
fix the situation, we should assume they were also
were involved in the trafficking network.
"How was the system organized? The KLA received huge
sums of cash for the organs.
"This money was used to buy drugs from Afghanistan,
which were later sold in Western Europe.
"The KLA bought arms using this money. Enough facts
had been dug up to indict Kosovo's former Prime
Minister Ramush Haradinaj, current head of state
Hashim Thaci and other prominent Albanians.
"But as opposed to being sent to prison, Haradinaj was
released from The Hague in early April even though he
had been charged with murdering Serbian civilians.
They said he wasn't guilty.
"But we have documented facts proving that Haradinaj
personally executed 60 Serbs and ordered 300 more to
be killed. Haradinaj's release was a severe blow for
the families of the deceased."
The tribunal's decision to set Haradinaj free was as
hurtful for Serbs as when the West recognized Kosovo's
independence.
The KLA's field commander was the equivalent of an
Albanian Shamil Basaev — cruel and uncompromising.
Nine witnesses were lined up to testify against
Haradinaj at The Hague. But they were all killed under
various circumstances during the trial. Two were
killed by a sniper, one died in an automobile accident
in Montenegro, two were stabbed, two were burned to
death in their car while serving in Kosovo's Police
and two were killed in a village cafe in Kosovo.
Many people in Serbia believe that Ramush Haradinaj
was a key figure in the organ trafficking network.
"Thaci was a criminal," Deyan Mirovich, a radical
party deputy in Serbia's parliament, told KP before
our trip to Kosovsku-Mitrovitsu.
He spouted off his version of a brief history of
modern-day Serbia. "First, Thaci was involved in drug
trafficking, then he headed a gang and later a
terrorist group.
"Now he's a U.S. and EU ally. Haradinaj is the same
story. He was a bouncer at a night club and ended up
running a terrorist organization.
"In the forward to his book 'Peace and Freedom,' he
wrote: 'I've killed Serbian policemen. I've killed
civilian Serbs and Albanians who were disobedient.'
"This is why I believe everything Ponte wrote. We know
all about this in Serbia. Haradinaj had a camp on Lake
Radonich in Metokhia. People were taken there from
Prizren, Pecha and Djakovitsa.
"Many were executed. People were also selected for
so-called medical centers. They were kept captive
while their organs were systematically extracted. You
want proof? Look for their relatives in Kosovo. That's
the only way. All the other evidence is destroyed."
Nothing to lose for Serbs in Kosovo's enclaves
Many people have heard the phrase "humanitarian
catastrophe," but few have actually seen one.
Serbian enclaves in Kosovo fall into this category.
Homeless children roam the streets. Adults loiter in
the sun, or wait for clients who never come in
self-styled cabs. Piles of trash lie by the roadside.
Disfunctional state services that won't do anything
even if they're asked to.
Forty last names of deceased Serbs are written on an
obelisk on the Serbian side of the bridge dividing the
town along ethnic lines. The Albanians have tried to
annex the Serbian section of the city on numerous
occasions. The bridge has served as a stage for bloody
wars.
KP traveled to the Kosovska-Mitrovica enclave in north
Kosovo to learn more about the enclave phenomenon.
Our journalists sat in a dilapidated cafe waiting for
the Kosovo Serbian rally to begin. The cafe's windows
were covered in bullet holes. The rally was to
commence at 12:44. The number has a special subtext.
It's the number of a UN resolution on Kosovo declaring
the territory an indelible part of Serbia.
Romanian soldiers from the NATO Kosovo Force (KFOR)
took the cover off the machine gun on the small
armored car. They knew they had to be ready.
Meanwhile, we drank coffee behind the UN courthouse.
Shrapnel had killed a Ukrainian peacekeeper there only
a week before. He had been on a peacekeeping mission
to introduce constitutional order in the country.
But Serbian lawyers weren't a part of that order.
They had been asked to leave the courthouse and were
later replaced by Albanians. Those who refused to
leave were arrested.
The peacekeepers hadn't realized Kosovo Serbs had been
on the edge of an explosion for several years.
They had nothing to lose. Their country had been taken
from them, and they had been left in poverty waiting
for a miracle. As we were told numerously, many Kosovo
Serbs consider a miracle to be 250,000 Russian
volunteers. Russian journalists, like us, were taken
for spies or advanced detachment.
"Sweet life" of guardians of the east
Mitrovica isn't really an enclave. It practically
borders Serbia, but a bridge divides the city into
Albanian and Serbian sections. Unofficial guards man
the Serbian side. This small detail shows who is the
aggressor in the situation and who is on the defense.
Forty last names of deceased Serbs are written on an
obelisk on the Serbian side. The Albanians have tried
to annex their section of the city on numerous
occasions.
The bridge served as a stage for bloody wars. It's
quiet on the Serbian side.
Muscular men sit in a pink 24-hour cafe. They're
officially called the bridge's guardians, as their job
is to stop Albanians attacking from across the bridge.
They greeted us cautiously. The waiter approached us
slowly and indifferently.
"One coffee, one bottle of water," we asked in
Serbian, adding in Russian that we were Russian
journalists writing about Kosovo Serbs. The demeanour
of the waiter and the guards changed immediately.
They offered us the table with a view of the bridge.
Soon after, the leader of the local branch of National
Serbs Union, Neboysha Iuvovich, came to the cafe and
greeted us.
"Many politicians are straying from their positions
and writing about the truth," Neboysha said. "Carla
del Ponte didn't want to write about what really
happened before because she would have had to launch
investigations into crimes connected with organ
trafficking. It would have been career suicide for an
EU politician in Kosovo.