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The Albanian parliament has asked Europe’s top human rights body to rescind a 2011 resolution that cited since-unfounded allegations of human organ trafficking during the 1990s war in Kosovo.
Parliament voted 125 votes in favor last Thursday evening in favor of a motion asking the Council of Europe to clear Albania and Kosovo of allegations of organ trafficking.
Supporters of this resolution said that such an action would help normalize relations between Kosovo and Serbia.
“This issue (organ harvesting claims) must end sometime, so that people can find the strength to reconcile and live together, healing the wounds of the past,” the resolution said.
In 2011, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a resolution calling for a European Union mission in Kosovo to investigate “war crimes and organ trafficking” in Kosovo and Albania. He cited allegations that fighters from the now disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army trafficked human organs taken from prisoners, killed Serbs and other ethnic Albanians in both Kosovo and Albania.
“Multiple indications seem to confirm that, during the period immediately following the end of the armed conflict, before international forces were really able to take control of the region and restore some semblance of law and order, organs were removed from some prisoners in a clinic in the Albanian territory … and taken abroad for transplantation”, the resolution states.
The resolution was based on a 2010 report by Swiss Senator Dick Marty, a Council of Europe investigator, who said the KLA was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Serbs, Roma and ethnic Albanians suspected of collaborating with Serbs during 1998- 1999 in Kosovo.
The KLA fought Serbian forces in an attempt to gain independence for Kosovo, then a Serbian province.
Marty’s report also concluded that there were cases in which some of the captives were killed to sell their organs on the international black market. A “yellow house” in a northern Albanian neighborhood was believed to serve as an organ harvesting clinic and attracted international media attention.
After a two-and-a-half-year investigation, a European Union special prosecutor said in 2014 that there were “convincing indications” that up to 10 captives were killed for their organs to be trafficked and sold on the black market. during the war.
However, the prosecutor said there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone with the alleged crimes.
The motion approved by the Albanian lawmakers stated that the claims in Marty’s report remained unproven and unfounded in evidence and facts and therefore they should be considered as such by national and international institutions.
The report was also the basis for an amendment to the Kosovo Constitution that created a special court to prosecute former KLA leaders for war crimes.
An EU-backed war crimes tribunal, Kosovo’s Specialized Chambers and an office linked to the Hague-based prosecution have arrested five former KLA leaders since 2020, including the former president of Kosovo, Hashim Thaçi and the former speaker of the parliament Kadri Veseli. They have denied wrongdoing. Only one of the five defendants appeared in court.
More than 13,000 people, mostly ethnic Albanians, died during the war between the KLA and Serbian military forces before a 78-day NATO bombing campaign forced Serbia to withdraw its troops and hand over control to the United Nations. United States and NATO.
Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008. The United States and most of the West recognize it as a country, but Serbia — backed by allies Russia and China, does not.
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