It appears that the Organ Trafficking story about Kosovo and the KLA just got a new player and a new organization that helped in the cover up: Soren Jessen Petersen, the head of the UN’s mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) from 2004 to 2006. Apparently, the Serbs are claiming that the UN and Mr Petersen were involved in covering up the actions of Prime Minister Hashim Thaci who is known to have “headed Kosovo Liberation Army faction which controlled secret detention centers in Albania where human organ trafficking was alleged to have taken place in the aftermath of the 1998-99 war between the guerrillas and Serbian forces.”
As of yesterday, Serbia has requested that the international war crimes court investigate Soren Jessen Petersen, former head of UNMIK. Isn’t this nice! Now it appears that the UN was also in on the criminal activities of the KLA. I wonder if the UN chiefs on the ground were getting any narcotics money as bribes?
I had to dig down to AFP and the Pakistani news service to get this story, then i found it on Breitbart. I am pretty sure that means that Christian Ammanpour wont be breathlessly gushing over the details of this story on CNN. I wonder how this would be covered if it were the Serbs trafficking in organs?
UN covered up organ trafficking report, says Serbia
Serbia asked the international war crimes court for the former Yugoslavia to investigate a former UN chief in Kosovo for covering up a report on organ trafficking, a report said on Sunday.
Serbia’s minister for cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) wrote to chief prosecutor Serge Brammertz seeking an inquest into Soren Jessen Petersen, the head of the UN’s mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) from 2004 to 2006, Blic newspaper reported.
“We are waiting for ICTY to open an inquest into UNMIK officials at the time for contempt of court,” minister Rasim Ljajic told the newspaper.
Council of Europe rapporteur Dick Marty published a report earlier this month that linked Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci to organ trading and organised crime, which Thaci has denied.
UNMIK investigated possible organ trafficking in 2004, but it did not take it further citing lack of evidence.
“At the time, UNMIK said it did not have a report on organ trafficking and had no proof … But in 2008 our war crimes prosecutor obtained 16 pages of this report,” Ljajic said.
Marty’s report said Thaci headed a Kosovo Liberation Army faction which controlled secret detention centres in Albania, where the human organ trafficking was alleged to have taken place in the aftermath of the 1998-99 war between the guerrillas and Serbian forces.
| 17 December 2010 | 19:22 | Source: B92, Tanjug | ||
| BELGRADE — National Hague Cooperation Council Chairman Rasim Ljajić says he will ask the Hague Tribunal to initiate “contempt of court proceedings”. They would be launched “against all those who interfered with the investigation into the illegal human organs trafficking in Kosovo”. The report on this issue published on Thursday concerns the killing and organ harvesting from a large number of Serbs and other civilians kidnapped in Kosovo by the ethnic Albanian KLA, in 1999 and 2000. Speaking for B92 on Friday evening, Ljajić said he will on Monday request that proceedings be launched against former heads of UNMIK, including Chief Soren Jessen-Petersen “and several other persons who interfered with the investigation because the policy of the international community in Kosovo at the time put stability before justice”. “They knew about all these charges and suspicions, but they did nothing to prosecute or examine them. On the contrary, they did all they could to cover up the whole thing and to prevent witnesses from participating and testifying about the crimes committed at the time,” Ljajić said. Special Political Adviser to the Hague Tribunal Chief Prosecutor Frederick Swinnen meanwhile told Tanjug that this office is “monitoring Belgrade’s moves, but will not voice its stand until it receives the request to launch the proceedings which the Serbian authorities announced”. |
Here is some more background on Prime Minister Thaci:
The report by the Council of Europe has named Kosovo’s Prime Minister Hashim Thaci as the “boss” of the criminal underworld behind the grisly trade.
Thaci was the political leader of the KLA during the Kosovo war in 1998-1999.
The Kosovo government has dismissed as “baseless and defamatory” the draft report, which was obtained by the British newspaper The Guardian.
Pristina has also issued a warning, saying it will take legal and political measures against what it called the “slanders.”
The report, which is the result of a two-year-long investigation by the special rapporteur of the Council of Europe, Dick Marty, is due to be published on Thursday.
It charges the KLA of secretly transferring its Serbian and Albanian prisoners from Kosovo to Albania, where they were murdered for their body parts.
Those organs were later sold on the black market to people in Canada, Germany and Israel.
The alleged crimes occurred after the Kosovo war ended in 1999.
The KLA has also been accused of involvement in heroin trade, and there is evidence that its activities in organized crime continue to the present day.
Marty is set to give his report to the legal and human rights committee of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg on Thursday.
The development comes as Thaci’s Democratic Party (PDK) won Kosovo’s parliamentary elections held on Sunday.
Kosovo opposition parties have cried fraud, claiming that the PDK has cheated.
In February 2008, Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia, and has so far been recognized by 68 countries, including the United States and a vast majority of the European Union.
The vote constituted the country’s first parliamentary elections since it proclaimed independence in 2008.