Restricted [provisional
version]
AS/Jur (2010) 46
12 December 2010
Ajdoc46 2010
Committee on
Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Inhuman
treatment of people and illicit trafficking in human organs in Kosovo*
Draft report
Rapporteur: Mr Dick Marty, Switzerland, Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe
A. Preliminary draft
resolution
1. The Parliamentary Assembly was extremely
concerned to learn of the revelations of the former Prosecutor at the International
Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), who alleged that serious crimes had
been committed during the conflict in Kosovo, including trafficking in human organs,
crimes which had gone unpunished hitherto and had not been the subject of any serious
investigation.
2. In addition, according to the former
Prosecutor, these acts had been committed by members of the "Kosovo Liberation
Army" (KLA) militia
against Serbian nationals who had remained
in Kosovo at the end of the armed conflict and been taken prisoner.
3. According to the information gathered by
the Assembly and to the criminal investigations now under way, numerous concrete and
convergent indications confirm that some Serbians
and some Albanian Kosovars were held
prisoner in secret places of detention under KLA control in northern Albania and
were subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment, before ultimately disappearing.
4. Numerous indications seem to confirm
that, during the period immediately after the end of the armed conflict, before
international forces had really been able to take control of the region and re-establish a
semblance of law and order, organs were removed from some prisoners at a clinic inAlbanian
territory, near Fushė-Krujė, to be taken abroad for transplantation.
5. This criminal activity, which developed
with the benefit of the chaos prevailing in the region, at the initiative of certain KLA
militia leaders linked to organised crime, has continued, albeit in other forms, until
today, as demonstrated by an investigation being carried out by the European Union Rule of
Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX) relating to the Medicus clinic in Pristina.
6. Although some concrete evidence of such
trafficking already existed at the beginning of the decade, the international authorities
in charge of the region did not consider it necessary to conduct a detailed examination of
these circumstances, or did so incompletely and superficially.
7. Particularly during the first years of
their presence in Kosovo, the international organisations responsible for security and the
rule of law (KFOR and UNMIK) had to cope with major structural problems and serious
shortages of staff with the skills to take on the tasks they were entrusted with, all this
being aggravated by rapid and constant staff rotation.
8. The ICTY, which had started to conduct
an initial examination on the spot to
establish the existence of traces of possible organ trafficking, dropped the
investigation. The
elements of proof taken in Rripe, in Albania,
have been destroyed and cannot therefore be used for more detailed analyses. No subsequent
investigation has been carried out into a case nevertheless considered sufficiently
serious by the former ICTY Prosecutor for her to see the need to bring it to public
attention through her book.
9. During the decisive phase of the armed
conflict, NATO took action in the form of air strikes, while land operations were
conducted by the KLA, de facto allies of the international forces. Following
the departure of the Serbian authorities,
the international bodies responsible for security in Kosovo very much relied on the
political forces in power in Kosovo, most of them former KLA leaders.
10. The international organisations in place
in Kosovo favoured a pragmatic political approach, taking the view that they needed to
promote short-term stability at any price, thereby sacrificing some important principles
of justice. For a long
time little was done to follow-up evidence implicating KLA members in crimes against the Serbian population and against certain Albanian Kosovars. Immediately
after the conflict ended, in effect, when the KLA had virtually exclusive control on the
ground, many scores were settled between different factions and against those considered,
without any kind of trial, to be traitors because they were suspected of having
collaborated with the Serbian authorities
previously in place.
11. EULEX, which took over certain functions
in the justice sector previously fulfilled by UN structures (UNMIK) at the end of 2008,
inherited a difficult and sensitive situation, particularly in the sphere of combating
serious crime: incomplete records, lost documents, uncollected witness testimony.
Consequently, a large number of crimes may well continue to go unpunished. Little or no detailed investigation has
been carried out into organised crime and its connections with representatives of
political institutions, or in respect of war crimes committed against Serbians andAlbanian Kosovars regarded as
collaborators or as rivals of the dominant factions. This last-named subject is still truly
taboo in Kosovo today, although everybody talks about it in private, very cautiously. EULEX seems very recently to have made
some progress in this field, and it is very much to be hoped that political considerations
will not impede this commitment.
12. The team of international prosecutors
and investigators within EULEX which is responsible for investigating allegations of
inhuman treatment, including those relating to possible organ trafficking, has made
progress, particularly in respect of proving the existence of secret KLA places of
detention in northern Albania where inhuman treatment and even murders are
said to have been committed. The investigation does not, however,
benefit from the desirable co-operation from the Albanian
authorities.
13. The appalling crimes committed by Serbian forces, which stirred up very strong
feelings worldwide, gave rise to a mood reflected as well in the attitude of certain
international agencies, according to which it was invariably one side that were regarded
as the perpetrators of crimes and the other side as the victims, thus necessarily
innocent. The reality
is less clear-cut and more complex.
14. The Parliamentary Assembly strongly
reaffirms the need for an absolutely uncompromising fight against impunity for the
perpetrators of serious human rights violations, and wishes to point out that the fact
that these were committed in the context of a violent conflict could never justify a
decision to refrain from prosecuting anyone who has committed such acts (see Resolution
1675 (2009)).
15. There cannot and must not be one justice
for the winners and another for the losers. Whenever a conflict has
occurred, all criminals must be prosecuted and held responsible for their illegal acts,
whichever side they belonged to and irrespective of the political role they took on.
16. The question which, from the
humanitarian viewpoint, remains the most acute and sensitive is that of missing persons. Of more than 6,000 disappearances on
which the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has opened files, approximately
1,400 individuals have been found alive and 2,500 corpses have been found and identified. For the most part, these wereAlbanian
Kosovar victims found in mass graves in regions under Serbian
control and in Kosovo. To
the almost 1,900 persons who went missing during the conflict and whose fate has still not
been established (approximately two-thirds of whom are Albanian
Kosovars) must be added almost 500 persons who disappeared after the arrival of KFOR
troops on 12 June 1999, about 100 of whom wereAlbanian Kosovars and close to 400 non-Albanians,
most of them Serbians.
17. Co-operation is still clearly
insufficient between international agencies on the one hand and the Kosovar and Albanian authorities on the other on finding
out the fate of the missing persons. Whereas Serbia ultimately
co-operated, it has proved far more complicated to carry out excavations on the territory of Kosovo, and has been impossible, at least so
far, on Albanian territory. Co-operation by the Kosovar authorities
is particularly lacking in respect of the search for the almost 500 persons who officially
disappeared after the end of the conflict.
18. The working group on missing persons,
chaired by the ICRC and the EULEX Office on Missing Persons, needs the full and
wholehearted support of the international community in order for the reluctance on both
sides to be overcome. Knowing
the truth and enabling victims' families to mourn at last is a vital precondition for
reconciliation between the communities and a peaceful future in this region of the
Balkans.
19. The Assembly therefore invites:
19.1 the member states of the European Union
and the other contributing states:
19.1.1 to allocate to EULEX the resources that
it needs, in terms of logistics and highly skilled staff, to deal with the extraordinarily
complex and important role entrusted to it;
19.1.2 to set EULEX a clear objective and give
it political support at the highest level to combat organised crime uncompromisingly, and
to ensure that justice is done, without any considerations of political expediency;
19.1.3 to commit all the resources needed to
set up effective witness protection programmes;
19.2 EULEX:
19.2.1 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 organised criminal groups and political circles;
19.2.2 to take every measure necessary to
ensure effective protection for witnesses and to gain their trust;
19.3 the ICTY to co-operate fully with EULEX,
particularly by making available to it the information and elements of proof in its
possession likely to help EULEX to prosecute those responsible for crimes within its
jurisdiction;
19.4 the Serbian
authorities:
19.4.1 to make every effort to capture the
persons still wanted by the ICTY for war crimes, particularly General Ratko Mladic and
Goran Hadzic, whose impunity continues to constitute a serious obstacle to the process of
reconciliation and is often referred to by the authorities of other countries to justify
their lack of enthusiasm about taking judicial action themselves;
19.4.2 to co-operate closely with EULEX,
particularly by passing to it all information which may help to clear up crimes committed
during and after the conflict in Kosovo;
19.4.3 to take the necessary measures to
prevent leaks to the press of information about investigations concerning Kosovo, leaks
which are prejudicial to co-operation with other authorities and to the credibility of the
investigative work;
19.5 the Albanian
authorities and the Kosovo administration :
19.5.1 to co-operate unreservedly with EULEX
and the Serbian authorities in the
framework of procedures intended to find out the truth about crimes committed in Kosovo,
irrespective of the known or assumed origin of the suspects and the victims;
19.5.2 in particular, to take action on the
requests for judicial assistance made by EULEX concerning criminal acts alleged to have
occurred in a KLA camp in northern Albania;
19.5.3 to start a serious
and independent investigation in order to find out the whole truth about the allegations,
sometimes concrete and specific, of the existence of secret detention centres where
inhuman treatment was purportedly inflicted on prisoners from Kosovo, of Serbian or Albanian
origin, during and immediately after the conflict; the investigation must also be extended
to a verification of the equally specific allegations about organ trafficking said to have
taken place during the same period, some of it on Albanian
territory;
19.6 all the Council of Europe member and
observer states concerned:
19.6.1 to respond without undue delay to the
requests for judicial co-operation addressed to them by EULEX and by the Serbian authorities in the framework of their
current investigations concerning war crimes and organ trafficking; the delayed response
to these requests is incomprehensible and intolerable in view of the importance and
urgency of international co-operation to deal with such serious and dangerous crime
problems;
19.6.2 to co-operate with EULEX in its efforts
to protect witnesses, especially when the persons concerned can no longer continue to live
in the region and must therefore adopt a new identity and find a new country of residence;
20. The Assembly, aware that trafficking of
human organs is now an extremely serious problem worldwide, manifestly contravening the
most basic standards in terms of human rights and dignity, welcomes and concurs with the
conclusions of the joint study published in 2009 by the Council of Europe and the United
Nations Organisation. It agrees in particular with the conclusion that it is necessary to
draft an international legal instrument, which lays down definitions of human organ,
tissue and cell trafficking and lays out the action that shall be taken in order to
prevent such trafficking and to protect its victims, as well as criminal law measures to
prosecute the perpetrators.
B. Explanatory memorandum by
Mr Dick Marty
Contents
1. Introductory remarks – an overview
2. Introductory commentary on sources
3. Detailed findings of our inquiry
3.3.1.1. First subset of captives: the
“prisoners of war”
3.3.1.1.1. Case study on the nature of the
facilities: Cahan
3.3.1.1.2. Case study on the nature of the
facilities: Kukės
3.3.2.1. Second subset of captives: the
“disappeared”
3.3.2.1.1. Case study on the nature of the
facilities: Rripe
3.3.2.1.2. Observations on the conditions of
detention and transport
3.3.2.2. Third subset of captives: the
“victims of organised crime”
Case study on the nature of the
facilities: Fushė-Krujė
1. Introductory remarks – an overview
1. In April 2008 Madam Carla Del Ponte, the
former Chief Prosecutor before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia (ICTY), published a set of memoirs, co-authored with Chuck Sudetic, on her
experiences within the tribunal. The
book initially came out in Italian (“La caccia – Io e i criminali di guerra”),
then in translation, notably in French (“La traque, les criminels de guerre et moi”).
In the book, almost ten years after the end of the war in Kosovo, there appeared
revelations of trafficking in human organs taken from Serb prisoners, reportedly carried
out by leading commanders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). These claims were
surprising in several respects and have provoked a host of strong reactions. They were
surprising, in the first place, because they emanated from someone who exercised the
highest official responsibilities, at the very heart of the judicial system tasked with
prosecuting the crimes committed in the course of the conflicts that ravaged the former
Yugoslavia. Furthermore,
and above all, they were surprising because they revealed an apparent absence of official
follow-up in respect of allegations that were nevertheless deemed serious enough to
warrant inclusion in the memoirs of the former Prosecutor could hardly have ignored the
grave and far-reaching nature of the allegations she had decided to make public.
2. Having before it a motion for a
Resolution (doc.11574), which demanded a thorough investigation into the acts mentioned by
Madam Del Ponte and their consequences, in order to ascertain their veracity, deliver
justice to the victims and apprehend the culprits of the crimes, the Committee on Legal
Affairs and Human Rights appointed me as Rapporteur and accordingly instructed me to
propose a preliminary draft resolution and to draw up a report.
3. The extraordinary challenges of this
assignment were immediately clear. The
acts alleged – by a former prosecutor of international standing, let us remember
– purportedly took place a decade ago and were not properly investigated by any of
the national and international authorities with jurisdiction over the territories
concerned. All the
indications are that efforts to establish the facts of the Kosovo conflict and punish the
attendant war crimes had primarily been concentrated in one direction, based on an
implicit presumption that one side were the victims and the other side the perpetrators.
As we shall see, the reality seems to have been more complex. 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. Even
certain representatives of international institutions did not conceal their reluctance to
grapple with these facts: “The past is the past”, we were told; “we must
now look to the future”. The Albanian
authorities intimated that their territory had not been affected by the conflict and that
they had no reason to open an inquiry. The Serbian
authorities did react, albeit rather belatedly, but so far without having achieved any
significant results. For its part the ICTY carried out an exploratory mission to the site
of the notorious “Yellow House”, though proceeding in a fairly superficial way
and with a standard of professionalism that prompts some bewilderment. In addition, the ICTY’s mandate was
restricted to a clearly defined timeframe and territory: the international tribunal was
enjoined to try those suspected of crimes committed only up to June 1999, marking the end
of the Kosovo conflict, and its jurisdiction does not extend to Albania, except in instances where Albania expressly
authorises investigations to take place on its territory.
4. The acts with which we are presently
concerned are alleged to have occurred for the most part from the summer of 1999 onwards,
against a background of great confusion throughout the region. The Serbian
security forces had abandoned Kosovo, and the troops of KFOR (NATO’s international
Kosovo Stabilisation Force) were making a rather slow start in establishing themselves;
while tens of thousands of Kosovar Albanian
refugees were originally trying to reach Albania and then to return home, with ethnic Serbs in
turn seeking refuge in the territories controlled by the Serbian Army. It was chaos: there was no functioning
administration on the part of the Kosovars, and KFOR took quite some time to gain control
of the situation, evidently not possessing the know-how needed to cope with such extreme
situations. The NATO intervention had essentially taken the form of an aerial campaign,
with bombing in Kosovo and in Serbia – operations thought by some to have
infringed international law, as they were not authorised by the UN Security Council –
while on the ground NATO’s de
facto ally was the KLA. Thus, during the critical period that is
the focus of our inquiry, the KLA had effective control over an expansive territorial
area, encompassing Kosovo as well as some of the border regions in the north of Albania. KLA control should not be understood as
a structured exercise of power, and it was certainly far from assuming the contours of a
state. It was in the
course of this critical period that numerous crimes were committed both against Serbs who
had stayed in the region and against Kosovar Albanians
suspected of having been “traitors” or “collaborators”, or who fell
victim to internal rivalries within the KLA. These crimes have largely gone
unpunished and it is only years later that a rather diffident start has been made in
dealing with them.
5. During this chaotic phase, the border
between Kosovo and Albania effectively ceased to exist. There was no form of control in effect,
and it would hardly have been possible to enforce rules anyway, considering the heavy flow
of refugees towards Albania and their return in similar numbers after the
end of the hostilities. During
a field mission on behalf of the Swiss Parliament in 1999, I was able to witness for
myself the scale of this phenomenon; I noted above all the singular solidarity shown by
the Albanian population and authorities in
receiving the Kosovar refugees. It
was in this context that KLA militia factions moved freely on either side of the border,
which, as pointed out, had by then become little more than a token dividing line. So it is clear that the KLA held
effective control in the region during that critical period, both in Kosovo and in the
northern part of Albanianear the border. The international forces co-operated
with the KLA as the local authority in military operations and the restoration of order. It was as a result of this situation
that certain crimes committed by members of the KLA, including some top KLA leaders, were
effectively concealed and have remained unpunished.
6. The crimes committed by the Serb forces
have been documented, denounced and, to the extent possible, tried in courts of law. The frightful nature of these crimes
hardly needs to be further illustrated. These
crimes stemmed from a wicked policy ordered by Milosevic over a lengthy period, including
at times when he was simultaneously being accorded full diplomatic honours in the capitals
of many democratic states. These crimes claimed tens of thousands of victims and disrupted
a whole region of our continent. In
the Kosovo conflict, the ethnic Albanian
population suffered horrendous violence as the result of an insane ethnic cleansing policy
on the part of the dictator then in power in Belgrade. None of these historical events
could be cast in doubt today. However,
what emerged in parallel was a climate and a tendency according to which led to all these
events and acts were viewed through a lens that depicted everything as rather too
clear-cut: on one side the Serbs, who were seen as the evil oppressors, and on the other
side the Kosovar Albanians, who were seen
as the innocent victims. In the horror and perpetration of crimes there can be no
principle of compensation. The basic essence of justice demands that everyone be treated
in the same way. Moreover, the duty to find the truth and administer justice must be
discharged in order for genuine peace to be restored, and for the different communities to
be reconciled and begin living and working together.
7. Yet in the case of Kosovo, the
prevailing logic appears to have been rather short-sighted: restore a semblance of order
as quickly as possible, while avoiding anything that might be liable to destabilise a
region still in a state of very fragile equilibrium. The result has been a form of justice
that can only be defined as selective, with impunity attaching to many of the crimes that
appear, based on credible indications, to have been directly or indirectly the work of top
KLA leaders. The Western countries that engaged themselves in Kosovo had refrained from a
direct intervention on the ground, preferring recourse to air strikes, and had thus taken
on the KLA as their indispensable ally for ground operations. The international actors chose to turn a
blind eye to the war crimes of the KLA, placing a premium instead on achieving some degree
of short-term stability. In effect the new Kosovo has been built on the existing
structures of the Kosovar Albanian
homeland movement. It follows that the successive international
administrations put in place, as well as the US Government, which is generally regarded as
playing an important role in the affairs of the new Kosovo,
have had to maintain good relations with their de
facto allies on the ground, as the
latter have become the new masters of the local political scene. This situation, as we emphasised above,
has ultimately foiled the prospect of our getting to the bottom of the crimes committed,
at least in cases where there is every indication that they were the misdeeds of persons
in positions of power or close to those in power. An added problem is that the resources
of the international administration under UNMIK were insufficient, both in quantity and in
quality, for the task of prosecuting the crimes committed in an effective and impartial
manner. The posting of most international staff to UNMIK on limited-term contracts, and
the resultant perpetual rotation, caused a major hindrance to the administration of
justice. International
officials told us that it had been impossible to maintain confidentiality of their sources
– an element considered essential to the success of a criminal investigation –
in particular because of their reliance on local interpreters who would often pass on
information to the persons being investigated. As a result, EULEX has had to bring in
interpreters from other countries in order securely to conduct its most sensitive
inquiries. The same
sources told us that the approach of the international community could be aptly
encapsulated in the notion of “stability and peace at any cost”. Obviously such an approach implied not
falling out with the local actors in power.
8. The EULEX mission, operational since the
end of 2008, thus inherited an extremely difficult situation. Numerous files on war crimes, notably
those in which KLA combatants were listed as suspects, were turned over by UNMIK in a
deplorable condition (mislaid evidence and witness statements, long time lapses in
following up on incomplete investigative steps), to the extent that EULEX officials stated
their fears in quite explicit terms during our fact-finding visits that many files would
simply have to be abandoned.
Some of our contacts representing Kosovo’s nascent civil society did not hold back in
criticising EULEX itself: it had been widely expected that EULEX would at last go after
the “untouchables”, whose more than murky past was common knowledge. Yet these expectations were in vain:
there had been many announcements and promises, but the tangible results remained to be
seen. The case of Nazim
Bllaca, the “whistle-blower” who admitted publicly to having carried out murders
upon the orders of some of today’s high-ranking politicians, is emblematic. Four days elapsed before the man was
arrested and placed under protection. The
way in which EULEX deals with his case will be an important test of how far it is prepared
to go in pursuing its mission to promote justice.
9. One must nevertheless commend the
remarkable dedication of many EULEX staff – at time of writing some 1,600
international executives and 1,100 local employees – and their determination to
confront the extraordinary challenge handed to them. Their efforts are beginning to yield
tangible results, notably with regard to the cases of the detention camp at Kukės and the
Medicus Clinic in Pristina. Yet
it is imperative that EULEX is given more explicit and more resolute support from the
highest levels of European politics. There
can be no lingering ambiguity as to the need to pursue all those suspected of crimes, even
in cases where the suspects hold important institutional and political positions. Similarly, EULEX must urgently be given
access to the complete sets of records compiled by international agencies that previously
operated in Kosovo, including KFOR files that have since been returned to the
troop-contributing countries,
and files compiled by the ICTY. According to the key practitioners
working on the ground, there ought to be a common, unified database comprising the
archives of all the international actors, readily accessible to EULEX investigators. One is left to wonder what might
possibly be the reasons put forward for failing to fulfil such a basic demand.
10. The Kosovo Police (KP), multiethnic in
its make-up, is professionally trained, well-equipped and apparently effective in fighting
petty crime or less serious forms of criminality. With over 7,200 uniformed officers and
more than 1,100 support staff, the KP comprises representatives of 13 ethnic groups,
including 10% of ethnic Serbs. According
to recent surveys, the KP is second only to KFOR among all the institutions in Kosovo in
the high levels of public trust it enjoys. Senior
international officials have also confirmed that the police are “decent”,
whereas the judges are “problematic” – in the sense of being subject to
intimidation, under political influence, or corrupt. Assessments of the police nevertheless
varied among the observers whom we met. The
KP still has to prove itself and to win the full confidence of its international partners,
including its counterparts in the EULEX mission. We sensed lingering doubts among
internationals as to whether or not all the leaders of the police force share the
necessary political resolve to go after all forms of crime in the most robust fashion
possible; especially where the police are called upon to combat organised crime, and / or
crimes in which highly placed political figures are implicated; and notably in ensuring
truly effective protection of witnesses, a very sensitive and vital tool in the
prosecution of the most notorious and dangerous criminals.
11. Corruption and organised crime
constitute a major problem in the region, as several international studies have shown. The problem is aggravated by the fact
that criminality, corruption and politics are so closely intertwined. The massive presence of international
staff does not appear to have made things any better, and indeed has given rise to some
rather perverse anomalies; for example, a driver or a cleaner working for an international
organisation or a foreign Embassy invariably earns appreciably more than a police officer
or a judge, which is bound to upset the scales of societal values.
12. The most pressing priority from a
humanitarian perspective is to account for the fate of missing persons in relation to the
Kosovo conflict. The
number of disappearances is extremely high when one considers the modest size of
Kosovo’s population. Out
of a total of 6,005 cases of missing persons opened by the International Committee of the
Red Cross (ICRC), some 1,400 persons have been found alive and it has been possible to
discover and identify 2,500 bodies. Most of the deceased victims were identified as
Kosovar Albanians, half of whom were
exhumed from mass graves discovered on Serbian
territory and the other half in Kosovo. In
addition there are 1,869 missing persons who remain unaccounted for, about two-thirds of
whom are Kosovar Albanians. 470 missing persons disappeared after
the arrival of KFOR troops on 12 June 1999, 95 of whom were KosovarAlbanians and 375 non-Albanians,
mainly Serbs.
13. In assessing these disappearances, it is
apt to note that many Kosovar Albanian
families who lost a relative after 12 June 1999 reportedly declared an earlier date of
disappearance, before this “cut-off date”, out of fear that their loved ones
might be deemed to have been “traitors” to the cause, punished by the KLA. It is significant that Kosovo’s law
on compensation for the families of “martyrs” expressly excludes persons who
died after the arrival of KFOR. As
to the law on compensation for the families of missing persons, which is still under
discussion, the stated position of the Kosovo authorities is that the law should cover
only those disappearances that occurred after 1 January 1999 and before 12 June 1999. This
position serves to demonstrate just how sensitive the matter of the missing Kosovar Albanians remains to the present day. According to several of our informants,
the matter is still considered utterly taboo and continues to form a serious impediment to
the discovery of the truth. The
hunt for “traitors” has often overshadowed the bloody feuding between internal
factions of the KLA, and served to cover up the crimes committed by KLA members and
affiliates.
14. The current Office for Missing Persons
and Forensics has cited great difficulties in working with
the often poor-quality documentation handed down by its predecessors;
it also apparently has trouble motivating and retaining its staff, who are said to be
underpaid considering the qualifications required. Efforts to determine the fate of missing
persons have also suffered from a clear deficit in co-operation between the various
international agencies and the Kosovo authorities, not to mention with the competent
authorities of Albania. While Serbia did co-operate, albeit not without initial
misgivings, in efforts to excavate suspected mass graves in its territory, such
investigative steps have proved far more complicated in the territory of Kosovo,
and up to now have been impossible on the territory of Albania.
The co-operation of the Kosovo authorities has been especially lacking in relation to the
470 cases of disappearances that officially occurred after the end of the conflict.
The lack of co-operation by the authorities of Kosovo and Albania in
determining the fate of the missing Serbs, and even Kosovar Albanians thought to have fallen victim to
crimes committed by members of the KLA, raises grave doubts about the current level of
political will to establish the whole truth concerning these events.
15. The Working Group on Missing Persons
chaired by the ICRC, in conjunction with the OMPF, needs the wholehearted support of the
international community to overcome the reluctance that exists on all sides. Such support should be offered not least
in the interests of the missing persons’ surviving relatives, whose anguish continues
to form a significant obstacle to reconciliation.
16. We have already recalled the manner in
which the allegations of organ trafficking were made public, assumed international
dimensions, and prompt PACE to call for the preparation of this report. There
was extensive discussion around the so-called “Yellow House”, located in Rripe,
near Burrel, in central Albania – to the point where this house appeared
to have monopolised the public’s attention. However, upon
reflection, the house was merely one element among many in a far larger and more complex
episode. It is true
that the whole story seems to have begun with the revelations about the “Yellow
House”. In
February 2004, an exploratory visit to the site was organised jointly by the ICTY and
UNMIK, with the participation of a journalist. This visit cannot in fact be regarded as
a proper forensic examination according to all the technical rules. Participants in the visit whom we
interviewed explicitly condemned a certain lack of professionalism, particularly regarding
the taking of samples and the recording of scientific observations. Nonetheless, the
demeanour of some members of the K. family, who inhabit the house, raised a number of
questions, notably about the differing and contradictory explanations they offered, one
after the other, as to the presence of bloodstains (detected by use of Luminol) in the
vicinity of a table in the main room. The family patriarch stated originally that farm
animals had been slaughtered and cut up there. Another explanation given was that one of
the women in the household had given birth to one of her children in the same place.
17. Neither the ICTY nor UNMIK, nor indeed
the Albanian Public Prosecutor’s
Office, followed up this visit by conducting any more thorough inquiries. The Albanian investigator who took part in this
site visit moreover hastened to assert publicly that no leads of any kind had been found. The physical samples collected at the
scene were subsequently destroyed by the ICTY, after being photographed, as the current
Chief Prosecutor of the ICTY confirmed to me in a letter. We must permit ourselves to express
astonishment that such a step was taken.
18. Nor did the team of the Special
Prosecutor for War Crimes in Belgrade come up with very concrete results in this matter,
notwithstanding their considerable efforts. The
media whirlwind that surrounded the inquiry certainly did nothing to enhance its
effectiveness. We thank
the special prosecutor for his co-operation and readiness to assist.
19. The teams of international prosecutors
and investigators in the EULEX mission charged with investigating the allegations of
inhuman treatment, including those relating to possible instances of organ trafficking,
have made some progress, notably towards proving the existence of secret KLA detention
facilities in northern Albania, where
murders are also alleged to have been committed. However, EULEX’s
inquiries have so far been hampered by a lack of co-operation on the part of theAlbanian
authorities, who have failed to respond to the specific, detailed requests for judicial
assistance submitted to them. At
the time of writing, EULEX has still not had access to the complete set of records
compiled by the ICTY in this area of investigation.
20. A further investigation, also carried
out by EULEX, into the case of the Medicus Clinic in Pristina, has been made similarly
difficult by the delays on the part of the authorities of several Council of Europe member
and observer countries in responding to EULEX requests for international legal assistance.
Considering the gravity of the acts alleged – trafficking in human organs, no less
– such delays are incomprehensible and unconscionable. It should be recalled that the
initial investigation had led to several arrests of suspects in November 2008. Arrest
warrants have since been issued in respect of other suspects currently at large. This investigation serves as further
proof of the existence in the region of criminal structures and networks, in which medical
practitioners are also implicated, operating in the region as part of an international
traffic in human organs, notwithstanding the presence of international forces. We believe that there are sufficiently
serious and substantial indications to demonstrate that that this form of trafficking long
pre-dates the Medicus case, and that certain KLA leaders and affiliates have been
implicated in it previously. Certainly the indications are too strong to countenance any
failure, at long last, to conduct a serious, independent and thorough inquiry.
21. We have learned at first hand how
difficult it is to reconstruct events in Kosovo during the troubled and chaotic period of
1999-2000. With the exception of a few EULEX investigators, there has been and remains a
lack of resolve to ascertain the truth of what happened during that period, and assign
responsibilities accordingly. The
raft of evidence that exists against certain top KLA leaders appears largely to account
for this reluctance. There
were witnesses to the events who were eliminated, and others too terrified by the mere
fact of being questioned on these events. Such witnesses have no confidence whatsoever in
the protective measures that they might be granted. We ourselves had to
take meticulous precautions in respect of certain interlocutors to assure them of the
strictest anonymity. We
nevertheless found them trustworthy and were able to establish that their statements were
confirmed by objectively verifiable facts. Our aim was not, however, to conduct a criminal
investigation. But we can claim to have gathered compelling enough evidence to demand
forcefully that the international bodies and the states concerned finally take every step
to ensure that the truth is ascertained and the culprits clearly identified and called to
account for their acts. The
signs of collusion between the criminal class and high political and institutional office
bearers are too numerous and too serious to be ignored. It is a fundamental right of
Kosovo’s citizens to know the truth, the whole truth, and also an indispensable
condition for reconciliation between the communities and the country’s prosperous
future.
22. Before going into further detail
regarding our investigations, I should like to express my appreciation to all those who
helped me in carrying out this difficult and delicate assignment. First and foremost I thank the Committee
Secretariat, assisted by an outside expert, as well as the authorities of the states we
visited, and the able, courageous investigative journalists who shared certain information
with us. I also owe
special gratitude to the persons who have trusted in our professionalism, not least in our
earnest duty to protect their identities so as not to place them in any danger.
2. Introductory commentary
on sources
24. Naturally we have tried wherever
possible to take these testimonies directly ourselves, either through on-the-record
meetings or through confidential interviews, in the course of visiting Pristina, Tirana,
Belgrade and other parts of the Balkan region. However, for a variety of reasons –
including their “disappearance”, for security reasons, their relocation
overseas, and the constraints of our official programme of meetings while on mission in
the region – some of the sources who provided these testimonies have not been
available to meet with us in person.
25. Moreover, we have faced the same
obstacles to obtaining truthful testimony about the alleged crimes of Kosovar Albanians as have other investigative bodies
throughout the past decade. The entrenched sense of loyalty to
one’s clansmen, and the concept of honour that was perhaps best captured in expert
reporting to the ICTY in its deliberations in the case of Limaj et al., 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.
26. 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
Italian mafia; even low-level operatives would rather take a jail term of decades, or a
conviction for contempt, than turn in their clansmen.
28. The interviewers who conducted these
interviews include representatives of law enforcement authorities in several different
countries, academic researchers, and investigative journalists of recognised repute and
credibility. We have
always insisted on corroboration of testimony.
3. Detailed findings of our
inquiry
29. The overall picture that emerges from
our inquiry differs dramatically in several respects from the conventional portrayal of
the Kosovo conflict. Indeed,
while there was certainly an intensely fought battle for the destiny of the territory of
Kosovo, there were very few instances in which opposing armed factions confronted one
another on any kind of military frontlines.
30. The abhorrent abuses of the Serb
military and police structures in trying to subjugate and ultimately to expel the ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo are well known
and documented.
31. The evidence we have uncovered is
perhaps most significant in that it often contradicts the much-touted image of the Kosovo
Liberation Army, or KLA, as a guerrilla army that fought valiantly to defend the right of
its people to inhabit the territory of Kosovo.
32. While there were undoubtedly numerous
brave soldiers who were willing to go to the warfront, in the face of considerable
adversity, and if necessary die for the cause of an independent Kosovar Albanian motherland, these fighters were not
necessarily in the majority.
33. From the testimony we have managed to
amass, the policy and strategy of some KLA leaders were much more complex than a simple
agenda to overpower their Serb oppressors.
34. On the one hand, the KLA leadership
coveted recognition and support from foreign partners including, notably, the United
States Government. Towards
this end the KLA’s internationally well-connected “spokesmen” had to fulfil
certain promises to their partners and sponsors, and / or adhere to particular terms of
engagement that were the de facto conditions of their receiving support from
overseas.
36. 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.
37. For more than two years after its
initial emergence in 1996, the KLA was regarded as a marginal, loosely organised
insurgency, whose attacks on the Yugoslav state were held by Western observers to amount
to acts of “terrorism”.
38. Our sources close to the KLA, along with
the testimonies of captured KLA members gathered by Serb police, confirm that the main
locations at which KLA recruits congregated and trained were in northern Albania.
39. It is well established that weapons and
ammunition were smuggled into parts of Kosovo, often on horseback, through clandestine,
mountainous routes from northern Albania. Serb police attributed these events to
criminal raids on the part of bandits who wanted to carry out terrorist acts against Serbian security forces. The Albanian
Kosovars and Albanian citizens who were
involved in the smuggling operations presented them as heroic acts of resistance in the
face of Serb oppression.
40. The domestic strengthening of the KLA,
in terms of its fighting capability as well as its credibility among the Kosovo Albanian population, seemed to play out,
especially in the course of 1998, along the same trajectory as the escalating brutality of
the Serb military and police clampdown.
41. Yet only in the second half of 1998,
through explicit endorsements from Western powers, founded on strong lobbying from the
United States, did the KLA secure its pre-eminence in international perception as the
vanguard of the Kosovar Albanian
liberation struggle.
42. This perceived pre-eminence was the
KLA’s most valuable, indispensable asset. It spurred the wealthiest donors in the Albanian Diaspora to channel significant funds
to the KLA. It bestowed
individual KLA representatives with an enhanced authority to speak and act on behalf of
the KosovarAlbanians as a whole. And
it cast the KLA’s leading personalities as the most likely powerbrokers in the Kosovo
that would emerge from the war.
43. Indeed, the perception of KLA
pre-eminence – largely created by the Americans – was a self-fulfilling
prophecy, the bedrock upon which the KLA achieved actual ascendancy over other KosovarAlbanian
constituencies with designs on power, such as Ibrahim Rugova’s Democratic League of
Kosovo (LDK) and Bujar Bukoshi’s “Government-in-exile”.
44. According to our insider sources, the
KLA fought just as hard, and devoted arguably more of its resources and political capital,
to maintain its advantage over its ethnic Albanian
rival factions as it did to carry out co-ordinated military actions against the Serbs.
45. At the same time it should be restated,
for emphasis, that the KLA was not a single, unitary combatant faction in the manner of a
conventional Army. There
was no formally appointed overall leader, or “commander-in-chief”, whose
authority was universally recognised by the other commanders and whose orders were met
with compliance among all the rank and file.
46. Rather, as the struggle over
Kosovo’s future governance evolved, and a full-blown conflict approached, the KLA was
divided by a deep-rooted internal factionalism.
47. Important sources of division included
divergent political ambitions, as well as disparate notions of the acceptable parameters
of violent resistance, on the part of the KLA’s most prominent personalities and
leadership contenders.
48. Thus there emerged in 1998 and 1999, and
particularly in the wake of the death of the KLA’s celebrated peasant commander Adem
Jashari[16],
several different KLA “splinter groups”.
49. Each of these splinter groups was led by
one of the KLA’s self-proclaimed founder members. Each group
comprised a loyal core of recruits and supporters, often drawn from among a few closely
affiliated clans or families, and / or concentrated in an identifiable geographical
territory of Kosovo. Each group identified their own leader as the
brightest hope to lead the KLA’s fight against the Serbs, and by extension, to
achieve self-determination for the Kosovar Albanian
people, whilst co-operating with the other KLA commanders on the basis of expediency.
50. Evidently it is the composition and
leadership of these KLA “splinter groups”, along with the pre-existing
popularity of the LDK, which carried over beyond the liberation struggle and have
essentially shaped the post-conflict political landscape of Kosovo[17].
51. Incumbency of the highest executive
offices in Kosovo has been shared among former leading KLA commanders for the last decade,
and most political campaigns have been contested on the basis of the candidates’
respective contributions to the liberation struggle, as well as the extent to which they
are seen as being able to promote the interests of the Kosovar Albanian people on an ongoing basis against
known and unknown adversaries.
52. The various KLA “splinter
groups” I refer to have been found to have developed and maintained their own
intelligence structures, among other forms of self-preservation. Through whatever means available to
them, and clearly on the fringes of the legal and regulatory systems, the keenest
purveyors of this de facto form of continued KLA warfare have conducted
surveillance of, and often sought to sabotage, the activities of their opponents and those
who might jeopardise their political or business interests.[18]
53. Furthermore we found[19] that the structures of KLA units had been
shaped, to a significant degree, according to the hierarchies, allegiances and codes of
honour that prevail among the ethnicAlbanian clans, or extended families, and which form a de facto set of laws, known as the Kanun, in the regions
of Kosovo from which their commanders originated.
54. Based on analytical information we
received from several international monitoring missions, corroborated by our own sources
in European law enforcement agencies and among former KLA fighters, we found that the main
KLA units and their respective zones of operational command corresponded in an almost
perfect mirror image to the structures that controlled the various forms of organised
crime in the territories in which the KLA was active.
55. Put simply, establishing which circle of
KLA commanders and affiliates was in charge of a particular region where the KLA operated
in Kosovo, and indeed in certain parts of the Republic ofAlbania, was the key to
understanding who was running the bulk of the particular trafficking or smuggling activity
that flourished there.
56. Most pertinent to our research, we found
that a small but inestimably powerful group of KLA personalities apparently wrested
control of most of the illicit criminal enterprises in which KosovarAlbanians were
involved in the Republic of Albania,
beginning at the latest in 1998.
57. This group of prominent KLA
personalities styled itself as the “Drenica Group”, evoking connections with the
Drenica Valley in Kosovo[20],
a traditional heartland of ethnic Albanian
resistance to Serb oppression under Milosevic, and the birthplace of the KLA.
58. We found that the “Drenica
Group” had as its chief – or, to use the terminology of organised crime
networks, its “boss” – the renowned political operator and perhaps most
internationally recognised personality of the KLA, Hashim Thaqi[21].
59. Thaqi can be seen to have spearheaded
the KLA’s rise to pre-eminence in the lead-up to the Rambouillet negotiations, both
on the ground in Kosovo, and overseas. He
also did much to foment the bitter internal factionalism that characterised the KLA
throughout 1998 and 1999.
60. On the one hand, Thaqi undoubtedly owed
his personal elevation to having secured political and diplomatic endorsement[22] from the United States and other Western
powers, as the preferred domestic partner in their foreign policy project in Kosovo. This form of political support bestowed
upon Thaqi, not least in his own mind, a sense of being “untouchable” and an
unparalleled viability as Kosovo’s post-war leader-in-waiting.
61. On the other hand, according to
well-substantiated intelligence reports that we have examined thoroughly and corroborated
through interviews in the course of our inquiry, Thaqi’s “Drenica Group”
built a formidable power base in the organised criminal enterprises that were flourishing
in Kosovo and Albania at the time.
62. In this regard, Thaqi reportedly
operated with support and complicity not only from Albania’s
formal governance structures, including the Socialist Government in power at the time, but
also fromAlbania’s secret services, and from the formidable Albanian mafia.
63. Many KLA commanders remained on Albanian territory, some even operating out of
theAlbanian capital Tirana, throughout the ensuing hostilities and beyond.
64. During the period of the NATO aerial
bombardment, which lasted several weeks, perhaps the principal shift in the balance of
power in Kosovo occurred as a result of the influx of foreigners into the region, in both
overt and implicit support of the KLA cause. Unable to gain access directly to the
territory of Kosovo, most of this foreign support was channelled through Albania.
65. In tacit acknowledgement of the safe
harbour afforded to them by the sympathetic Albanian
authorities, but also because it was more practical and more convenient for them to
continue operating on the terrain with which they were familiar, several of the KLA’s
key commanders allegedly established protection rackets in the areas where their own
clansmen were prevalent inAlbania, or where they could find common cause with established
organised criminals involved in such activities as human trafficking, sale of stolen motor
vehicles, and the sex trade.
66. Notably, in confidential reports
spanning more than a decade, agencies dedicated to combating drug smuggling in at least
five countries have named Hashim Thaqi and other members of his “Drenica Group”
as having exerted violent control over the trade in heroin and other narcotics[23].
67. 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. Thaqi was commonly identified, and cited
in secret intelligence reports, as the most dangerous of the KLA’s “criminal
bosses”.
68. Several further known members of
Thaqi’s “Drenica Group” have been indicated to us in the course of our
research to have played vital roles as co-conspirators in various categories of criminal
activity. They include
Xhavit Haliti, Kadri Veseli, Azem Syla, and Fatmir Limaj. All of these men have been investigated
repeatedly in the last decade as suspects in war crimes or organised criminal enterprises,
including in major cases led by prosecutors under UNMIK, the ICTY[26],
and EULEX. To the
present day, however, all of them have evaded effective justice.
69. Everything leads us to believe that all
of these men would have been convicted of serious crimes and would by now be serving
lengthy prison sentences, but for two shocking dynamics that have consolidated their
impunity: first, they appear to have succeeded in eliminating, or intimidating into
silence, the majority of the potential and actual witnesses against them (both enemies and
erstwhile allies), using violence, threats, blackmail, and protection rackets; and second,
faltering political will on the part of the international community to effectively
prosecute the former leaders of the KLA. This also seems to have allowed Thaqi – and
by extension the other members of the “Drenica Group” to exploit their position in order to
accrue personal wealth totally out of proportion with their declared activities.
70. Thaqi and these other “Drenica
Group” members are consistently named as “key players” in intelligence
reports on Kosovo’s mafia-like structures of organised crime.[27] I have examined these diverse,
voluminous reports with consternation and a sense of moral outrage.
71. What is particularly confounding is that
all of the international community in Kosovo – from the Governments of the United
States and other allied Western powers, to the EU-backed justice authorities –
undoubtedly possess the same, overwhelming documentation of the full extent of the Drenica
Group’s crimes[28],
but none seems prepared to react in the face of such a situation and to hold the
perpetrators to account.
72. Our first-hand sources alone have
credibly implicated Haliti, Veseli, Syla and Limaj, alongside Thaqi and other members of
his inner circle, in having ordered – and in some cases personally overseen –
assassinations, detentions, beatings and interrogations in various parts of Kosovo and, of
particular interest to our work, in the context of KLA-led operations on the territory of Albania, between 1998 and 2000.
73. Members of the “Drenica Group”
are also said to have asserted control of substantial funds placed at the disposal of the
KLA to support its war effort.[29] In several instances this group was
allegedly able to strike deals with established international networks of organised
criminals, enabling expansion and diversification into new areas of “business”,
and the opening of new smuggling routes into other parts of Europe.
74. Specifically, in our determination, the
leaders of the “Drenica Group” seem to bear the greatest responsibility for two
sets of unacknowledged crimes described in this report: for running the KLA’s ad hoc network of detention facilities on the
territory of Albania[30];
and for determining the fate of the prisoners who were held in those facilities, including
the many abducted civilians brought over the border into Albania from
Kosovo.
75. In understanding how these crimes
descended into a further form of inhumanity, namely the forcible extraction of human
organs for the purposes of trafficking, we have identified another KLA personality who
apparently belongs to the leading co-conspirators: Shaip Muja.
76. Up to a point, Shaip Muja’s
personal biography in the liberation struggle of the KosovarAlbanians resembles those of
other “Drenica Group” members, including Hashim Thaqi himself: from student
activist in the early 1990s[31];
to one of an elite group of KLA “Co-ordinators”, based inAlbania[32];
to Cabinet member of the Provisional Government of Kosovo, and leading commander in the
post-war Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC)[33];
reinvented as a civilian politician in the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK); and, finally,
becoming an influential office-holder in the current Kosovo authorities[34].
77. The common thread running through all of
Muja’s roles is his involvement in the medical sector. We do not take it lightly that this
individual presents himself, and is accepted in many quarters, as “Dr. Shaip
Muja”: purportedly not only a medical doctor and general surgeon, but also a
humanitarian and progressive practitioner[35].
78. We have uncovered numerous convergent
indications of Muja’s central role for more than a decade in far less laudable
international networks, comprising human traffickers, brokers of illicit surgical
procedures, and other perpetrators of organised crime.
79. These indications and elements of proof
have prompted us to suspect that Muja has derived much of his access, his cover and his
impunity as an organised criminal from having maintained an apparently legitimate medical
“career” in parallel. There
is an analogy to be drawn here with the way that Thaqi and other Drenica Group members
have used their own roles in public office, and often in international diplomacy. The difference in Muja’s case is
that his profile in organised crime is scarcely known outside of the criminal networks he
has worked with and the few investigators who have tracked them.
80. According to the testimonies of our
sources who were party to KLA operations in Albania,
as well as other military and political compatriots who know Shaip Muja intimately, Muja
managed to acquire and retain crucial behind-the-scenes influence over the affairs of the
KLA in the defining period in the late 1990s when it was garnering international support.
81. Then, in the period of hostilities in
northern Albania and around the Kosovo border, coinciding with
the NATO intervention in 1999, Muja, in common with most of his fellow KLA commanders,
reportedly stayed well clear of the frontlines, maintaining the KLA’s operational
power base in Tirana.
82. Together with Haliti and Veseli, in
particular, Muja became involved in finding innovative ways to make use of, and to invest,
the millions of dollars of “war funds” that had been donated to the KLA cause
from overseas. Muja and
Veseli reportedly also began, on behalf of the “Drenica Group”, to make
connections with foreign private military and private security companies[36].
83. We found it particularly relevant that
Thaqi’s “Drenica Group” can be seen to have seized such advantage from two
principal changes in circumstances after 12 June 1999.
84. First, the withdrawal of the Serb
security forces from Kosovo had ceded into the hands of various KLA splinter groups,
including Thaqi’s “Drenica Group”, effectively unfettered control of an
expanded territorial area in which to carry out various forms of smuggling and
trafficking.
85. 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.
86. Second, Thaqi’s acquisition of a
greater degree of political authority (Thaqi 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.
87. Our sources told us that both KLA
commanders and rank-and-file members were exasperated by the heavy toll inflicted on the
ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo,
particularly in 1998 and early 1999 before and during the NATO intervention. As the Serb police and paramilitary
forces retreated from Kosovo in June 1999, KLA units from northern Albania were
deployed into Kosovo with the ostensible objective of “securing the territory”,
but fuelled by an irrepressible anger, and even vengeance, towards anyone whom they
believed had contributed towards the oppression of the ethnic Albanian people.
88. Serb inhabitants of predominantly ethnic Albanian communities quickly became targets for
revenge. Other targets
included anybody suspected – even upon the basis of baseless accusations by members
of rival clans or persons who held long-standing vendettas against them – of having
“collaborated with” or served Serb officialdom. In a door-to-door campaign of
intimidation, KLA foot soldiers were ordered to collect names of persons who had worked
for the ousted FRY authorities (in however trivial an administrative function), or whose
relatives or associates had done so. Into
this category of putative “collaborators” fell large numbers of ethnic Albanians, as well as Roma and other
minorities.
89. Against this background, our account of
abuses committed by KLA members and affiliates inAlbania goes well beyond one-off aberrations on the
part of rogue or renegade elements within an otherwise disciplined fighting force. On the contrary, we find these abuses
widespread enough to constitute a pattern.
90. While certain acts speak to a particular
brutality or disregard for the victims on the part of individual perpetrators, we find
that in their general character these abuses were seemingly co-ordinated and covered up
according to a premeditated, albeit evolving, overarching strategy on the part of the
leadership of the Drenica Group.
91. In general terms, the abuses were
symptomatic of the prevalence of organised criminality inside the KLA’s dominant
internal faction. Holding
persons captive in makeshift places of detention, outside the knowledge or reach of
authority, and contriving ways of silencing anyone who might have found out about the true
nature of the illicit activities in which the captors are engaged, count as tried and
trusted methodologies of most mafia structures – and the Drenica Group was no
different.
92. The Drenica Group itself apparently
evolved from being part of an armed force, the KLA (ostensibly engaged in a war of
liberation), into being a conspicuously powerful band of criminal entrepreneurs, the
Drenica Group (albeit one with designs on a form of “state capture”). In
parallel we have detected a transformation in the Group’s members’ activities in
one particular area of operations: detention facilities and the inhuman treatment of
captives.
93. In the course of our inquiry we have
identified at least six separate detention facilities on the territory of the Republic of Albania, situated across a territory that spans
from Cahan at the foot of Mount Pashtrik, almost at the northernmost tip of Albania, to the beachfront road in Durres, on
the Mediterranean coast in the west of Albania.
94. The KLA did not have outright, permanent
control of any part of this territory during the relevant time, but nor did any other
agency or entity that might have been willing, or able, to enforce the law.
95. In particular, the lacuna in law
enforcement was a reflection on the failure of the Albanian
police and intelligence services to curb the mafia-like banditry and impunity of certain
KLA units that had stationed themselves in northern and central Albania around
the period of the conflict. The
KLA’s senior regional commanders were, in their respective areas of control, a law
unto themselves.
96. The locations of the detention
facilities about which we received testimony directly from our sources – corroborated
by elements of proof gathered through the efforts of investigative journalists (some of
which dates back ten years or more), and more recently through the efforts of EULEX
investigators and prosecutors – included: Cahan; Kukės; Bicaj (vicinity); Burrel;
Rripe (a village southwest of Burrel in Mat District); Durres; and, perhaps most important
of all, for the purposes of our specific mandate, Fushė-Krujė.
97. We were able to undertake visits to the
sites of two such detention facilities in Albania in the course of our inquiry, although we did
not enter the facilities themselves. Additionally,
in respect of at least four other such facilities that we know to have existed, we have
heard first-hand testimony from multiple persons whom we have confirmed as having visited
one or more of the facilities in person, either at the time that they were actively being
used by the KLA, or on monitoring missions since.
98. The detention facilities in question
were not resorted to independently or as self-standing entities. Rather, these detention facilities did
exist as elements of a well-established, co-ordinated and joined-up network of unlawful
activity, of which certain senior KLA commanders maintained control and oversight. The common denominator between all of
the facilities was that civilians were held captive therein, on Albanian territory, in the hands of members and
affiliates of the KLA.
100. There were, nonetheless, considerable
differences in the periods and purposes for which each of these detention facilities was
used. Indeed, it is
evident that each detention facility had its own distinct “operational profile”,
including with regard to: the manner of the relationships formed or deals made to enable
detentions and related operations to take place there at different times; the character
and composition of the groups of captives held there; the means by which the captives
arrived there; and the fates awaiting those captives during and at the end of their
respective periods of detention.
101. We shall begin by describing some of the
general characteristics of KLA detentions in wartime (some of which seem to meet the
threshold for war crimes), and post-conflict detentions carried out by KLA members and
affiliates (which appear to constitute an organised criminal enterprise). Thereafter we will examine more closely
what happened at each of the detention facilities on the territory of Albania.
3.3.1.1 First subset of captives: the
“prisoners of war”
102. In the period between April and June
1999, KLA detentions on Albanian territory
were discernibly based on the perceived strategic imperatives of fighting a guerrilla war.
103. During the time of war and the attendant
mass movements of refugees into Albania,
the KLA reportedly implemented a policy under which all persons suspected of having the
merest knowledge about the acts of Serb authorities, particularly those who were suspected
of having been
“collaborators”, should be subjected to “interrogation”.
104. We were told that this policy was
supported actively on the territory of Albania by powerful elements within the Albanian national intelligence apparatus,
including SHIK (now SHISH) and military intelligence, some of whose members even
participated in asking questions of captives held at KLA detention camps. However, the driving force behind the
policy was Kadri Veseli (alias Luli), a lynchpin of the Drenica Group.
105. The detention facilities at which the
“interrogations” purportedly took place – particularly those closer to the
border with Kosovo – doubled as military “bases” or “camps” at
which training exercises were performed and from which frontline troops were dispatched,
or re-supplied with arms and ammunition. They
included disused or appropriated commercial properties (including one hotel and one
factory) in or on the outskirts of larger provincial towns, which had essentially been
given over to the KLA by sympathetic Albanians
who supported the patriotic cause.
106. At times these wartime camps were used
simultaneously as detention facilities and other purposes, such as: parking vehicles or
storing caches of military hardware; stockpiling of logistics or supplies like uniforms
and rifles; conducting repairs on broken-down vehicles; treating injured comrades; or for
holding meetings between different KLA commanders.
107. For the most part, however, the captives
were purportedly kept separate from what might have been considered as conventional
“wartime” activities, and indeed the captives were largely insulated from
exposure to most KLA fighters or external observers who might have visited the KLA’s
bases.
108. If all of the captives detained in KLA
facilities on the territory of Albania were divided into subsets of the overall group
according to the fates they met, then in our understanding the smallest subset of all
comprises the “prisoners of war”: those who were held purely for the duration of
the Kosovo conflict, many of whom escaped or were released from Albania, returned home safely to Kosovo, and
are alive today.
109. We are aware of there being
“survivors” in this category, who have gone on to bear witness to the crimes of
individual KLA commanders, who were held in facilities at one or more of the following
three detention locations:
Cahan – KLA camp close to the Kosovo warfront,
also used as a “jump station” from which to deploy troops;
Kukes – former metal factory converted into a
multi-purpose KLA facility, including at least two “cellblocks” to house
detainees; and
Durres – KLA interrogation site at the back of
the Hotel Drenica, the KLA’s headquarters and recruitment centre.
110. Based on source testimonies, along with
material contained in indictments issued by the Office of the Special Prosecutor for the
Republic of Kosovo, we estimate that a cumulative total of at least 40 persons, each held
in one or more of the three above-named detention locations, were detained by the KLA[37] and have survived to the present day.
111. This subset comprised mostly ethnic Albanian civilians – as well as some KLA
recruits – suspected of being “collaborators” or traitors, either on the
premise that they had spied for the Serbs, or because they were thought to have belonged
to, or supported, the KLA’s political and military rivals, especially the LDK and the
emergent Armed Forces of the Republic of Kosovo (FARK)[38].
112. Persons in this subset were targeted
primarily for interrogation, and several have described being asked questions while being
treated roughly by KLA and Albanian
intelligence officers. However, during further periods of detention that
went on to last from a few days to more than a month, most of these captives were
ultimately beaten and mistreated gratuitously by their captors, in what appeared to be
measures of punishment, intimidation and terror.
113. The KLA commanders accused of having
been in charge of these detention locations included Sabit Geqi, Riza Alija (alias
“Commander Hoxhaj”), and Xhemshit Krasniqi. All three men featured prominently in
previous UNMIK investigations into war crimes in northern Albania; all three have now been named in SPRK
indictments, and should soon stand trial in the Kosovo District Court[39];
and their properties have been extensively searched.
114. The evidence gathered in the course of
these processes seem to indicate that these KLA operatives – along with their
Regional Commander for Northern Albania,
the now deceased Xheladin Gashi – were aligned with the “Drenica Group”,
under the direction of Hashim Thaqi, and were acting in concert with, among others, Kadri
Veseli.
3.3.1.1.1. Case study on the nature of
the facilities: Cahan
115. The camp in Cahan was the furthest north
of all the facilities in Albania used by the KLA, and was accordingly most
closely tied to activities at the warfront[40]. We have found no indication that
captives were taken out of Cahan to other detention facilities in Albania, although we cannot rule it out.
116. It seems that the deeper into Albanian territory a facility’s physical
location, the less directly it related to the KLA’s war effort and the more
entrenched its connection proved to be with the underworld of organised crime.
117. We found it telling that persons who
described having been held captive and mistreated at Cahan had largely been apprehended in
an arbitrary and relatively spontaneous fashion, often in the course of KLA patrols in the
vicinity of the camp itself, or at checkpoints on the border crossing between Kosovo and Albania.
118. The persons in this first subset were
apparently mostly released when warfront hostilities ceased and the Serb security forces
had withdrawn from their positions inside Kosovo, in June 1999. The
survival of these captives in significant numbers is demonstrated not least by the listing
of more than a dozen named persons with the status of “injured parties /
witnesses” in criminal proceedings against the commanders of the Cahan and Kukes
sites.
3.3.1.1.2 Case study on the nature of the
facilities: Kukės
119. Among the specific sites at which
civilian captives were secretly detained in the custody of the KLA, we obtained extensive
details about a KLA base at a disused factory building on the outskirts of the northern Albanian town of Kukes.
120. Two first-hand witnesses explained to us
how prisoners had been brought to the Kukes site, where they were thrown into makeshift
cellblocks, left in insanitary conditions without food and water, and were visited
periodically by KLA soldiers to be questioned under harsh treatment, or indiscriminately
beaten.
121. The extent of the ill-treatment suffered
by prisoners at this facility has been meticulously documented, inter alia, by Kosovar and international personnel working
in the Office of the Special Prosecutor of Kosovo. In statements given to prosecutors in
2009 and 2010, more than ten individuals – almost all of them ethnic Albanians –
described having been detained indefinitely, struck brutally with sticks and other
objects, and subjected to various forms of inhuman treatment at the Kukes site. Several witnesses stated that screams of
agony from persons held in separate sets of cellblocks could be heard filtering through
the corridors.
122. The Government of Albania has
stated that there are no bodies of deceased persons related to the Kosovo conflict buried
in the territory of Albania, and indeed
that there never were. The
case of Kukes proves that this claim is manifestly untrue.
123. First, there are bodies that were cast
into rivers in Kosovo and have been carried downstream over the border into Albania. The exhumation of such bodies and the
recovery of their remains by representatives of the OMPF in Kosovo would be relatively
“uncontroversial” – but even intervention on these cases has been strongly
resisted by the Albanian authorities.
124. Second, there are known individual cases
in which the bodies of murdered Kosovars have been identified as having been interred in Albania. These cases have led – in instances
documented by both Albanian and
international journalists, and made known to us – to prolonged, albeit discreet,
negotiations between the families of these Kosovars and the authorities administering the
cemetery site(s) in Albania. Ultimately, and of particular note, in
one case explained to us in detail by a first-hand source, bodies have been exhumed and
repatriated to Kosovo for a proper burial by the families. The Albanian
authorities told us that they knew of no such cases.
125. Third, there are allegations of the
existence of mass grave sites on the territory of the Republic of Albania. The Serbian
War Crimes Prosecutors’ Office stated to us that they have in their possession
satellite photographs of the areas in which these mass graves are located – but up to
now, the sites themselves have not yet been found, despite a formal request made by the Serbian to the Albanian authorities to carry out searches.
126. We obtained records from the local
cemetery in Kukes, which seem to carry a significant confirmation: bodies of persons from
Kosovo had indeed been buried in Northern Albania. The most important document was a
five-page “List of deceased immigrants from Kosovo, 28 March 1999 – 17 June
1999”, which was prepared by the Supervisor of Public Services in the Municipality of
Kukes, northern Albania.
127. The document has subsequently been
admitted as evidence in the District Court of Mitrovica, Kosovo, upon submission of the
Special Prosecutors’ office of Kosovo. One
of the deceased persons on the list – Anton Bisaku, featured at No. 138 – was
found to have been among the known victims of secret detention and inhuman treatment at
the KLA facility located in Kukes, Albania.
128. According to an indictment issued in
August 2010, Bisaku and an unspecified number of other civilians held in detention in
Kukes were “repeatedly beaten and struck with sticks and batons, kicked, verbally
abused and tortured”. In
charging the defendant Sabit Geci with “War Crimes Against Civilian Population”,
including “the killing of a civilian at Kukes, one Anton Bisaku who was beaten and
shot”, the EULEX Special Prosecutor stated that Bisaku was “killed as a result
of gunfire directed at him during a session of inhuman treatment, beating and torture
which occurred on or about 4 June 1999”.
129. After 12 June 1999, Kosovar Albanians
continued to detain persons for a variety of motives, including revenge, punishment and
profit. The
perpetrators – all of whom were, according to our sources, KLA members and affiliates
– thereafter fashioned their own novel means of apprehending and abusing civilians,
and transporting them out of Kosovo to new detention facilities in Albania, distinct from those that been operated
by the KLA in wartime.
130. In the months directly after the
declared end of the Kosovo conflict in June 1999, members and affiliates of the KLA
purportedly delivered scores of persons they had abducted into secret detention on Albanian territory.
132. According to our information, there was
not just one facility in Albania at which this post-conflict form of secret
detention took place – there was a whole ad
hoc network of such facilities, joined
up by frequent journeys between them on Albania’s
provincial roads, and across the porous, chaotic (especially at the time of the mass
refugee movements in mid-1999) border between Kosovo and Albania.
133. We were able to access corroborated,
first-hand testimony from former KLA fighters and auxiliaries who carried out multiple
transports into and between the facilities named in our report, as well as transports of
captives out of most of them.
135. The facilities in which captives were
detained in the post-conflict period differed in character from the wartime facilities: we
have found that they were primarily rustic private residences in rural or suburban areas,
including traditional Albanian farmhouses
and their storage barns.
136. There was, in addition, at least one
custom-built element to the post-conflict network of detention facilities, which was
unique in appearance and purpose. It
constituted a state-of-the-art reception centre for the organised crime of organ
trafficking. It was
styled as a makeshift operating clinic, and it was the site at which some of the captives
held by KLA members and affiliates had their kidneys removed against their will. According to our sources, the
ringleaders of this criminal enterprise then shipped the human organs out of Albania and
sold them to private overseas clinics as part of the international “black
market” of organ-trafficking for transplantation.
3.3.2.1 Second subset of captives: the
“disappeared”
137. The captives in this subset were victims
of enforced disappearance: none has been seen, heard of or accounted for, since being
abducted from Kosovo, in the weeks and months directly after 12 June 1999.
138. The orchestrators of this post-conflict
criminal enterprise had apparently put in place a process of filtering, whereby a smaller
number of captives was picked out selectively from each larger group of disappeared, and
moved on to somewhere else. The
evidence suggests that the rationale behind the process of filtering captives in this
manner was linked to a determination of the suitability of the chosen captives for the use
that awaited them.
139. Factors thought to have played into the
filtering process, as recounted to us by multiple sources, included age, sex, health
condition, and indeed the ethnic origin of the captives, ethnic Serbs having been targeted
primarily.
140. We heard numerous references to captives
not merely having been handed over, but also having been “bought” and
“sold”. It
was as a result of these references that we tried to understand more clearly the
intersection between the abductions and undeclared detentions in the context the conflict,
and the activities of organised crime, which was prevalent in many sectors of daily life
in the region.
3.3.2.1.1.1 Case study on the nature of the
facilities: Rripe
141. In the course of our inquiry, we
established that at least three sources whose testimonies we obtained unquestionably were
physically present at the house of the K.
family in Rripe near Burrel (the much-cited “yellow house”) in the context of
KLA criminal enterprises during which they were present.
142. Each of these sources was able to
recount unique and specific details regarding the precise location and appearance of the
house, the background of its proprietor, the KLA personnel posted there, and the character
and commandership of the illegal activities that took place in the house in the period
from 1999 to 2000.
143. Based upon these source testimonies, it
can be concluded that the K. house was occupied by, and under the control of the KLA who
were part of a network that operated throughout most of the northern half of Albania.
144. A small group of KLA commanders
reportedly ordered and oversaw multiple deliveries of civilian captives to the K. house
over a period of up to a year, from July 1999 until mid-2000. Most of these captives had
been abducted from the provincial areas of southern Kosovo and brought intoAlbania using the methods of transportation described
in this report. Unlike
those held in Kukes, the captives brought to Rripe were predominantly ethnic Serbs.
145. In addition, sources close to the KLA
spoke of a large number of trafficked women and girls being brought to the K. house, where
they were exploited for sex not only by the KLA personnel, but also by some of the menfolk
in the Rripe community.
146. During the period in which the KLA
maintained a presence at the house, the silence of the inhabitants of Rripe as to the
presence of KLA units and their activities was, according to our sources, obtained by
threats, but also by “pay-offs” including significant sums of money, as well as
free access to alcohol, drugs and prostitutes.
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, both while the KLA was occupying the K. house, and
in the period after the KLA had vacated the K. house and the family inhabitants had
returned.
148. Our findings in relation to the K. house
appear to corroborate, to a large extent, the findings made by a team of investigative
journalists working for the US-based documentary producers “American Radio
Works”. These findings were summed up in a confidential internal memo submitted to
UNMIK in 2003, which in turn gave rise to the investigative mission to the K. house
referred to before.
149. Yet, the testimonies we gathered also
revealed a dimension to the KLA's operations at the K. house that had not previously been
reported, either by the ARW team, or in the memoirs of former ICTY Chief Prosecutor Carla
del Ponte, or in the successive “revelations” in the media.
150. KLA operatives in fact not only dropped
off captives at Rripe, but apparently also picked up captives from Rripe, for
transportation onwards to different detention facilities. According to the testimonies of drivers
involved in transporting the captives, some of the persons they picked up at Rripe were
the same persons they had brought from Kosovo, while others had arrived at Rripe from a
different and unknown provenance, which the drivers never found out.
151. The K. house was therefore not the
endpoint, or ultimate destination, in this joined-up network of detention facilities and
captive transports. Its precise role, its importance to the whole operation, was perhaps
previously misconstrued.
152. The K. house appears in fact to have had
the character of more of a “way station”, at which captives were held in transit
to their ultimate fate, and according to certain sources, subjected to apparently strange
forms of “processing” / “filtering”, including the testing of their
blood and physical condition.
3.3.2.1.2 Observations on the conditions of
detention and transport
153. Captives were reportedly held
incommunicado under constant armed guard at these detention facilities, either in rooms
that were part of the main buildings, or in barns, garages, warehouses or other adjoining
structures designed for storage.
154. During the transports between these
buildings, captives were routinely bundled into vans and trucks, restrained by binding
their hands behind their backs, and tied to internal fixtures of the vehicle.
155. 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.
3.3.2.2 Third subset of captives: the
“victims of organised crime”
156. The last and most conspicuous subset of
captives in the post-conflict period, not least because its fate has been greatly
sensationalised and widely misunderstood, comprises the captives we regard as having been
the “victims of organised crime”. Among
this subset are a handful of persons whom we found were taken into central Albania to
be murdered immediately before having their kidneys removed in a makeshift operating
clinic.
157. The captives in this subset 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.
158. The captives were, as we were told, each
moved through at least two transitory detention facilities, or “way stations”,
before being delivered to the operating clinic. These “way stations”,
apparently controlled by KLA operatives and affiliates aligned to the “Drenica
Group”, were situatedinter alia in
the following detention locations:
Bicaj (vicinity) – an apparently privately-owned house in a
small village south of Bicaj, in a rural setting not far removed from the main road
towards Peshkopi;
Burrel – on the outskirts of the town of Burrel,
a compound containing at least two individual structures in which captives were locked up,
as well as a house in which operatives congregated and rested;
Rripe – the two-storey, self-standing farmhouse
referred to as the K. house, or the “Yellow House”, which was subject to a
combined UNMIK / ICTY forensic site visit in 2004 after being identified by investigative
journalists; and
Fushė-Krujė – another detached, two-storey farmhouse
removed from the main roads and enclosed within a large compound, which reportedly served
as a “safe house” not only for KLA affiliates, but for other groups of organised
criminals involved in smuggling drugs and trafficking in human beings.
Case study on the nature of the
facilities: Fushė-Krujė
159. It was in the last of the locations
discovered in our investigations, Fushė-Krujė, that the process of “filtering”
purportedly reached its end-point, and the small, select group of KLA captives who were
brought this far met their death.
160. There are strong indications, from
source testimonies we have obtained, that in the process of being moved through the
transitory sites, at least some of these captives became aware of the ultimate fate that
awaited them. In detention facilities where they were held in earshot of other trafficked
persons, and in the course of being transported, some of these captives are said to have
pleaded with their captors to be spared the fate of being “chopped into pieces”[41].
161. At the latest when their blood was drawn
by syringe for testing (a step that appears to have been akin to “tissue
typing”, or determining levels of organ transplantation compatibility), or when they
were physically examined by men referred to as “doctors”, the captives must have
been put on notice that they were being treated as some form of medical commodities. Sources described such tests and
examinations having been undertaken in both Rripe and Fushė-Krujė.
162. 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.
163. We learned from distinct and independent
KLA insider sources about diverse elements and perspectives of the organ-trafficking ring
in action: on the one hand, from the perspective of drivers, bodyguards and other
“fixers” who performed logistical and practical tasks aimed at delivering the
human bodies to the operating clinic; and on the other hand, from the perspective of the
“organisers”, the criminal ringleaders who, as alleged, entered business deals
to provide human organs for transplantation purposes in return for handsome financial
rewards.
164. The practical dimension of the
trafficking enterprise was relatively simple. Captives brought as far as the
Fushė-Krujė area (which entailed an arduous drive of several hours onwards from Rripe or
Burrel) were first held in the “safe house” facility. The proprietor of this property was an
ethnicAlbanian who allegedly shared both clan ties and organised criminal connections with
members of the “Drenica Group”.[42]
165. As and when the transplant surgeons were
confirmed to be in position and ready to operate, the captives were brought out of the
“safe house” individually, summarily executed by a KLA gunman, and their corpses
transported swiftly to the operating clinic.
166. The surgical procedures thereupon
performed – cadaver kidney extractions, rather than surgeries on live donors –
are the most common means through which donor organs and tissues are acquired for
transplant purposes – except for the criminal method of obtaining the cadavers.
Eminent organ transplantation experts whom we have consulted during our inquiry described
these procedures to us as efficient and low-risk.[43]
167. Sources stated that the Fushė-Krujė
axis was chosen to host these facilities because of its proximity to the main airport
servicing Tirana. The
facilities at the hub of this organ-trafficking ring – the “safe house” and
the operating clinic – therefore offered accessibility for incoming international
visitors and outgoing shipments alike.
4. Medicus clinic
168. In the course of our inquiry we have
uncovered certain items of information that go some way beyond our findings as presently
reported. This
information appears to depict a broader, more complex organised 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. However, out of respect for the ongoing
investigations and judicial proceedings being led by EULEX / the Office of the Special
Prosecutor of Kosovo, we feel obliged at this moment to refrain from publishing our
findings in this regard. Suffice
to say, we encourage all the countries whose nationals appear in the indictment regarding
Medicus to do their utmost to halt this shameful activity and assist in bringing its
orchestrators and co-conspirators to justice.
5. Reflections on the “glass ceiling of
accountability” in Kosovo
169. Our inquiry has found that there exists
a “glass ceiling of accountability” with regard to the investigations currently
being undertaken, and the indictments thus far issued, under the auspices of the Special
Prosecutors’ Office in Kosovo.
170. There seem to be two principal
impediments to the quest for justice on behalf of the Kosovo people, as it is being led by
the SPRK. The first
problem is that the de facto reach of the investigations is carefully
managed and restricted by the Kosovo authorities their collaboration with EULEX therefore
suffers from a profound lack of confidence.[44]
171. Second, these men would apparently
rather accept justice in the courts for their alleged roles in the running of illicit
detention camps and the trafficking of human organs, respectively, than implicate their
former senior KLA commanders, upon whose authority they acted and who are now senior
political figures.
172. The central impediment to achieving true
justice for many Kosovars, therefore, seems to be the ancestral custom, which still
prevails in some parts of society, of entrenched clan loyalty, or its equivalent in the
sphere of organised crime. Even
where the conspirators in question are not themselves members of the same clans or
extended families, the allegiances they feel towards their criminal “bosses” are
as unbreakable as any family bonds.
173. Therefore, Sabit Geqi will resolutely
avoid implicating those truly responsible for the torture of civilian prisoners at Kukes,
who have now become respectable public figures. Equally, Ilir Rrecaj will continue to
accept the consequences of being a scapegoat for the irregular licensing and funding
practices in respect of the Medicus clinic in Pristina, rather than point the finger at
those who are truly responsible for this organised criminal activity in Kosovo’s
health sector.
174. The result is that political leaders can
plausibly dismiss the allegations relating to KLA involvement in detention, torture and
murder in Albania – serious allegations that deserve to be
investigated, as we have seen, much more seriously than has been the case so far - as
little more than a “spectacle” created by Serbian
political propagandists.
6. Some
concluding remarks
175. In concluding, we should once again
recall that that this report has been drawn up in the wake of the revelations that
appeared in the memoirs of the former Chief Prosecutor of the ICTY. Shocked by those
disclosures, the Parliamentary Assembly entrusted us with the task of looking more closely
into the allegations and the human rights violations said to have been committed in Kosovo
in the material period. The elements reported in the former Prosecutor's book primarily
concerned the alleged trafficking of human organs. Our difficult, sensitive investigations
enabled us not only to substantiate those elements, but also to shed light on further,
related allegations and to draw a very sombre, worrying picture of what took place, and is
to some extent continuing to take place, in Kosovo. Our task was not to conduct an
criminal investigation -we are not empowered to do so, and above all we lack the necessary
resources - let alone to pronounce judgments of guilt or innocence.
176. The information we have gathered
nonetheless concerns extremely grave events that took place in the very heart of Europe.
The Council of Europe and its member states cannot remain indifferent to such a situation.
We have shown that organised crime is a significant phenomenon in Kosovo. This is nothing
new, and it is admittedly not exclusive to Kosovo. Organised crime is a dreadful problem
in the region and also affects Serbia, Montenegro and Albania, to name but a few examples.
There are also worrying, surprising links and affinities between the different groups
involved. Moreover, such criminal groups seem to co-operate with each other far more
effectively than the responsible national and international judicial authorities. We have
highlighted and documented the shady, and in some cases open, connections between
organised crime and politics, including representatives of the authorities; that too is
nothing new, at least for those who have not sought to close their eyes and ears at all
costs. The silence and the failure to react in the face of such a scandal is just as
serious and unacceptable. We have not engaged in mere rumour-mongering, but have rather
described events on the basis of multiple testimonies, documents and objective evidence.
What we have uncovered is of course not completely unheard-of. The same or similar
findings have long been detailed and condemned in reports by key intelligence and police
agencies, albeit without having been followed up properly, because the authors' respective
political masters have preferred to keep a low profile and say nothing, purportedly for
reasons of "political expediency". But we must ask what interests could possibly
justify such an attitude of disdain for all the values that are invariably invoked in
public? Everyone in Kosovo is aware of what happened and of the current situation, but
people do not talk about it, except in private; they have for years been waiting for the
truth - the whole truth, rather than the official version - to be laid bare. Our sole aim
today is to serve as spokespersons for those men and women from Kosovo, as well as those
from Serbia and Albania, who, regardless of their ethnic or religious backgrounds, simply
aspire to the truth and to an end to scandalous impunity, with no greater wish than to be
able to live in peace. Truth and accountability are absolute necessities if there is to be
genuine reconciliation and lasting stability in the region. In the course of our mission
we met with persons of great valour – both local and international actors – who
are fighting to overcome indifference and build a fairer society. They deserve not only
our expressions of solidarity, but also our full and active support.
We have noted the remarkable
confessions of a man named Nazim Bllaca, who came forward last year and testified as to
the use of these intelligence structures in targeted killings and different forms of
racketeering; Bllaca’s depiction of this secret underworld is one we recognise from
our own research.
See, e.g., the report of the IEP (Institut für
Europäische Politik, Berlin) of 9 January 2007 prepared for the German Federal Ministry
of Defence (“Operationalisierung
von Security Sector Reform (SSR) auf dem Westlichen Balkan – intelligente/kreative
Ansätze für eine langfristig positive Gestaltung dieser Region”); document
classified as secret and yet accessible on Internet; at page 57 the authors indicate that
"Thaqi is considered, in security circles, as much more dangerous than Haradinaj, who
as former head of KLA possesses a wider international network." (my own translation)
Another report of the German secret service (Bundesnachrichtendienst/BND), similarly
available on Internet (BND Analyse vom 22.02.2005), names Messrs Thaqi, Lluka and
Haradinaj as key personalities of organised crime in Kosovo and explores in particular, in
27 pages of thorough analysis, the ramifications of the "Drenica Group". We did
not limit ourselved to the study of these reports, and other sources, but we interviewed a
number of persons who had been involved, at ground level, in the preparation of these
reports.
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