Byzantine Blog

Hashim Thaci's Macabre Legacy: Throne on Mountain of Corpses

In its March 26 edition, Press Online published an excerpt from the testimony of one of Hague witnesses about Kosovo Serbs kidnapped by the KLA for organ harvesting. In her book "The Hunt", to be published in Italy in April, ICTY's former chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte revealed that Hague prosecution learned about a group of more than 300 Serbs kidnapped from the southern Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija in the summer of 1999, who were taken to northern Albania in trucks, to have their vital organs extracted and sold in the West.

The Hague eyewitness, who personally took part in the harrowing ordeal, testified that trade with vital organs of the kidnapped Kosovo Serbs was conducted under a direct supervision of Hashim Thaci, the current 'Premier' of the fake mafia state in southern Serbia.

The witness, listed in the ICTY documentation under the protective code K-144, stated that kidnapping of the Serbs and harvesting their organs before they were killed was a "well organized and very profitable business", conducted under the control of the KLA leaders and with the consent of the Albanian state officials.

"In the course of this action at least 300 kidneys and around 100 of other organs were extracted and sold through Italy. The prisoners had their livers extracted too, and in few cases also the hearts... I know that the price of a kidney was between 10,000 and 50,000 German Marks. They said that the total earnings was in excess of four million Deutsch Marks. There was a precise documentation, all of the extracted organs were listed, along with the amounts of money charged. The reports were submitted to the KLA commanders, who submitted them in person to Hashim Thaci. The KLA command was taking 80 percent of the earnings. The rest was divided among the men who organized the extraction and transport of the organs," the Hague witness described the grisly operation in his statement.

Albania, Mass Grave for Serbs

According to him, there were several prison camps in central and northern Albania in 1999 where the Kosovo Serbs kidnapped for organ harvesting were held.

"It was a well organized system. Doctors would examine all the prisoners, they had files for each. When they would get the information from Italy which organ was needed, it would be decided who will go under a knife. The prisoners were anesthetized, their organs were extracted, and then they would most often be left to die by being taken off the life support... In several cases the younger prisoners, after having one kidney extracted, were sutured and returned with others, but that caused great panic and unrest among the others, so this practice was dropped", the Hague witness said.

He stated that the killed Serbs were buried in mass graves which were moved several times in 2000.

"The biggest mass grave with some 100 Serbs was in the place Burel in central Albania. I have personally helped burying the Serbs there... When it was heard about the action and there was a danger of investigation being launched, this mass grave was opened, and the killed were moved to around dozen of other locations. Some remains were burned...", ICTY protected witness stated.

He also testified that there were few dozens of "used-up prostitutes" in the prison camps in northern Albania, who, after the medical examinations, were also mutilated and had their vital organs extracted before being killed.

"There were also some Russian women, Romanians and Moldavians. I once asked about them. They told me that those are the whores who have done their jobs," the ICTY witness said.

Del Ponte Received All the Evidence by 2004

President of the Association of Kidnapped and Missing Kosovo Serbs Simo Spasic announced the lawsuit against the former ICTY chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte for covering up these monstrous crimes, by failing to bring charges against the KLA leaders in the case of Serbs whose vital organs were harvested in Albanian prison camps.

Speaking for Tanjug news agency, Spasic said his Association is waiting to receive Del Ponte's book "The Hunt, Me and War Criminals", based on which the Association representative, Belgrade lawyer, will submit a lawsuit against Del Ponte.

Spasic said that this is an issue of a criminal act Del Ponte, as a chief prosecutor, was duty-bound to sanction.

According to Spasic, the families of the missing Kosovo Serbs have been warning about the KLA atrocities over the non-Albanians in the Kosovo-Metohija province since 1999. The Association of the Families had informed Del Ponte about their findings twice, in 2001, during Del Ponte's trip to Belgrade and in 2004, when the Association representatives went to the ICTY in Hague.

Recalling those meetings, Spasic said that the first was held in the cabinet of then-Foreign Affairs Minister Goran Svilanovic, in the presence of Florence Hartmann, Anton Nikiforov and the ICTY chief investigator, Finn Matti Ratkinnen who carefully wrote down and taped the entire conversation.

"We gave them all the evidence about the Kosovo Serbs who, under the armed guard and in columns, were transfered through Montenegro to Albania. One of my missing brothers was among them, Zarko, with whom I later talked over the phone, on May 19, 1998, thanks to one connection," Spasic said.

He added that the war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic now has a video tape which Spasic received from the Serbian Interior Police Minister Dragan Jocic, and which contains the video recording of his brother alongside one uniformed man and two civilians.

Spasic said that Del Ponte was also informed about the telephone call he received in 2003, when a male who did not want to reveal his identity, told him about the things Albanians are doing to Serbs before they kill them.

"He told me their vital organs are being extracted, heart and kidneys, and even the sperm, for sale in Western Europe and USA", said Spasic.

"During our Hague meeting in 2004, the chief prosecutor greeted us with the information that all of our loved ones were killed, some in northern Albania, some in the concentration camps Likovac and Lapusnik", Spasic said, adding that when they asked why are the KLA leaders, who are hiding the remains of our family members, being protected, Del Ponte replied that "their turn will come too".

Muslim Representative of Helsinki Committee Confirmed KFOR and UNMIK Knew About KLA Concentration Camps

The late President of the Raska region Helsinki Committee, Muslim Shefko Alomerovic was also pointing to the fact that Albanians held Kosovo-Metohija Serbs in concentration camps. His testimony was especially shocking for the foreigners, because it was coming from someone who could not be labeled a "pro-Serbian" source.

Alomerovic testified that Aljos Malja, the chief of the KLA secret police, runs all the concentration camps for Serbs in Kosovo-Metohija province, which existed in six locations, most often in boiler rooms, garages and cellars of the public buildings and private homes.

In the interview to the magazine "Reporter" given in April 2000, Alomerovic said: "KFOR and UNMIK are aware of the charges by the Sandzak Helsinki Committee. Committee has people who are employed with both KFOR and UNMIK, and these men confirmed that KFOR offices in Pristina, Pec and Kosovska Mitrovica have received the relevant documentation from the Committee. These are our men whom we trust and their testimony is a sufficient evidence that KFOR is aware of the concentration camps."

Scott Taylor: Western Leaders and Media Know About Atrocities Against Serbs, but Prefer to Ignore Them

"In 1999 there were rumors in Kosovo that the vital organs of the kidnapped and missing Serbs are being sold, but they were discarded as a 'Serb propaganda'," said Scott Taylor, Canada's military analyst and former member of the peacekeeping forces in Kosovo province in 1999.

Taylor, who has worked as a war correspondent and is the current editor of the military magazine Esprit de Corps, commenting the claims in Del Ponte's book for Saturday edition of the Belgrade daily Vecernje novosti, said it was simply not possible that NATO and UNMIK did not know about the trade in human organs extracted from kidnapped Kosovo Serbs, while the ICTY's chief prosecutor knew about these atrocious crimes.

"Nothing was published about the crimes against the Serbs that Albanians in some cases committed even in the plain view of foreign reporters and NATO troops," said Taylor.

Taylor reminded that a series of those crimes committed under the command of KLA leader Agim Ceku, were witnessed by the Canadian troops which recorded them, especially the war crimes in Croatia (Medak Pocket massacre and the ethnic cleansing of over 300,000 Serbs from Srpska Krajina in Croatia, code named Operation Storm).

Taylor said that he continued to write about Ceku's crimes and included in his memoirs the Canadian double standards, exemplified in the charges Canada's judge Louis Arbour at the post of ICTY chief prosecutor brought against the late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic in 1999, for the alleged Racak massacre, which the forensic experts rejected as a fraud.

"One has to wonder why she, at the same time, failed to raise charges against the KLA leaders for trafficking the organs extracted from the kidnapped Serbs".

Taylor said he does not represent the Serbian position, but simply demands that the full truth should be revealed before any decisions are made. "Throughout the entire conflict in the Balkans, everyone overlooked the number of crimes committed against Serbs," he said.

Serbian Medical Society: The Most Heinous Crimes Since Nazi Germany

The Serbian Medical Society of Kosovo and Metohija requested that Serbia's Ministries of Health, Justice and Foreign Affairs urgently initiate the international investigation regarding the claims that Kosovo Serbs had their organs extracted for sale.

Addressing the press conference in Kosovska Mitrovica on Saturday, Dr. Milan Jakovljevic, President of the Serbian Medical Society, along with Society members Dr. Miladinka Barac and Dr. Dragan Stefanovic, said that Serbia has to immediately cut all diplomatic ties with Albania, the country where the kidnapped Kosovo Serbs were taken to have their organs extracted.

Dr. Jakovljevic explained that "human organs can be taken only by the skilled medical staff, which means that medical workers took part in these heinous crimes". He stressed that the greatest responsibility for the entire "massacre the international community is ignoring for eight years, avoiding to face responsibility for this even today", rests on the medical workers who took part in the monstrosity.

"We demand that the identity of the medical workers who took part in this operation is revealed, that they are prohibited from practicing medicine and held criminally responsible. We shall work till the very end to make sure the whole truth comes to light, if for no other reason, then so that the families of those tormented Serbs who were kidnapped at least receive a moral satisfaction," said Dr. Jakovljevic, calling on the World Health Organization to launch investigation into this "most inhumane act, before seen only in the Second World War, during the reign of Nazi Germany."

UNMIK Policemen Lied About Kidnapped Serbs in Albania

Milorad Avramovic (38), father of three children, who worked in Trepca mine, was kidnapped in June 1999, in the southern part of Kosovska Mitrovica. His wife Maya Avramovic said that she received the confirmation from certain UNMIK police officers in the same year that her husband is alive and imprisoned in northern Albania.

"At the time, one Argentinian whose name was Ramon Armacado and one Bulgarian whose name I can't remember, said that in the summer of 1999 Kosovo Albanians took some 300 kidnapped Serbs in trucks to Albanian camps, in the places Tropoja and Kukes," she said, adding that her husband was among them.

She said they told her that "everyone works there, they are unloading the construction material, building roads for Haradinaj, that the trucks are bringing food to them and that they are even wearing some kind of the workers' jumpsuits."

"Unfortunately, nobody took seriously our fears in all these years, even though they were entirely rational, after it was confirmed that the kidnapped Serbs were being taken to Albania", Avramovic said.

She said that her children were deeply distressed with the latest information about the kidnapped Serbs who were used for organ harvesting and that KFOR and UNMIK heads should also be brought to justice, since they were clearly informed about everything that went on, and did nothing to put an end to this, or to bring charges against the criminals.

Recommended: Need a Liver? Kill a Serb., by Julia Gorin (Republican Riot); Is Kosovo the End of Europe?, by Ash Narain Roy (Mainstream Weekly); U.S. acceptance of Kosovo poses problem, by John Meinhold (SCTimes.com); U.S. blunders by recognizing Kosovo independence, by James A. Palmer (Detroit Free Press); Pentagon aims to take Kosovo under its wing, by Tamara Zamyatina (Canada, Edmonton Journal)