19-01-2011, 12:16 PM
[B] Peter ISKENDEROV: Human Organs Traffickers and the Turkish Trail[/B]
| News | 19.01.2011 | 12:49
[/url]
[URL="http://www.strategic-culture.org/tags/european-union.html"]
[url=http://www.strategic-culture.org/tags/turkey.html][/url] The January 25 PACE debates over Kosovo and discussions of human rights rapporteur Dick Marty's report will be an opening of the breakaway province's theme in 2011. Not only the future of the investigation into the crimes committed by the Albanian separatists including the notorious Kosovo premier Hashim Thaci but the evolution of the entire independent Kosovo project launched by the architects of the new world order largely depend on the tone of the coming PACE event.
Time will show whether Europe's activity is going to be limited to routine surveys and whether its ability to cope with the trans-Balkan Albanian criminal network will prove nonexistent. Is there a chance that the probe will expose the driving mechanisms behind the Kosovo independence, which admittedly shocked even a person as experienced and hardened as Marty? The shock was caused not so much by the extent of the activity of illicit human organs traffickers, smugglers, arms dealers, and likewise fighters for Kosovo independence as by the fact that Western governments and respectable intentional organizations routinely helped to cover up the crimes.
In December, 2010 the PACE Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights decided to launch a series of regional and international-level investigations into disappearances of people, human organs trafficking, corruption, and the merger between organized criminal groups and political circles in Kosovo. The PACE Committee even described the delay of the probe into war crimes and human organs trafficking as outrageous and unacceptable.
However, the investigation is proceeding at a snail pace in anticipation of the PACE winter session. Formally, it is undertaken only by the EU civilian police mission in Pristina, but the mission is churning out documents which look more like declarations of intentions than like serious investigation reports. One gets an impression that at the moment the EU priority is to maximally disguise the anti-Serbian character of the crimes committed by Albanian separatists and the involvement of the Kosovo administration in the corresponding offenses.
Currently the story of Turkish surgeon Yusuf Sonmez who was arrested recently in Istanbul based on an international warrant but released shortly is sold as the main intrigue. EU prosecutors Jonathan Ratel and Guido Estreich plan to interrogate him in Istanbul and, according to Serbian media, have supplied three boxes packed with documents to their Turkish colleagues. Belgrade's Vecherne Novosti says the documents are supposed to convince the Turkish court that Sonmez was the main surgeon in the group which lured people from Turkey, Kazakhstan, Moldova, and Azerbaijan to the Medicus clinic in Pristina. Strictly speaking, only Turkish courts have jurisdiction over the Sonmez case as Turkey's laws prohibit the extradition of the country's nationals. As for Sonmez, he admits he stayed in Kosovo to perform surgeries but denies any wrong-doing and currently refuses to go to Pristina.
From a broader perspective, the whole story built around the Turkish trail may be tricky. The story of the Pristina-based Medicus clinic and the organ removals performed in it by Sonmez are likely to be only small part of the grim dossier Marty rolled out at the PACE and a narrow reflection of the criminal activity formerly described by ICTY prosecutor Carla Del Ponte and Serbia's law-enforcement agencies. A notorious Yellow House not far from Burrel, in the north of Albania, rather than the Medicus clinic, was the site where most illicit extractions of human organs had taken place. The organs taken from the Yellow House prisoners, most of whom at least 300 people being Serbs, were delivered to the Tirana airport and further smuggled to European clinics. Del Ponte mentioned (and the PACE inquiry now confirmed) that two informants said they helped to bury the dead in the proximity of the Yellow House and at the nearby cemetery. They also told that everything was done with direct involvement of the Kosovo Liberation Army's top officers. Del Ponte quoted a Hague tribunal prosecution report as saying that all those held in Albanian camps by the summer of 1999 disappeared the same summer. The bases of the Kosovo Liberation Army in which Hashim Thaci used to be the political leader also existed in Albania in 1998-1999.
The materials of the Sonmez case also shed light on the human organs trafficking via Turkey and Israel by another criminal network which was headed by the Kosovo government's current healthcare adviser. Evidently, Washington is trying to switch the investigation to this trace and thus divert it from the Kosovo leaders and the whole Kosovo independence project. By the way, Marty is known to have said that due to its inclination to mutual cover-ups - the EU police mission in Kosovo was not the optimal site for probing into the crimes committed by Thaci and his team.
There is yet another reason why the EU might be trying to limit the investigation into the illegal human organs operation to the Turkish trail. At the moment the EU is locked in heated debates over the feasibility of admitting Turkey to its ranks, and the EU Balkan policies including massive financial infusions into Kosovo are drawing heavy criticism. Consequently, a carefully dozed inquiry exposing the Turkish doctor and some background characters from the Pristina political scene could help Brussels to demonstrate intolerance to crime in Kosovo, strengthen its negotiating positions in dealing with Ankara, and at the same time prove that the human organs trafficking in Kosovo was a limited phenomenon which had nothing to do with the Kosovo Liberation Army or the anti-Serbian terrorism.
http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/20...trail.html
| News | 19.01.2011 | 12:49
[/url]
[URL="http://www.strategic-culture.org/tags/european-union.html"]
[url=http://www.strategic-culture.org/tags/turkey.html][/url] The January 25 PACE debates over Kosovo and discussions of human rights rapporteur Dick Marty's report will be an opening of the breakaway province's theme in 2011. Not only the future of the investigation into the crimes committed by the Albanian separatists including the notorious Kosovo premier Hashim Thaci but the evolution of the entire independent Kosovo project launched by the architects of the new world order largely depend on the tone of the coming PACE event.
Time will show whether Europe's activity is going to be limited to routine surveys and whether its ability to cope with the trans-Balkan Albanian criminal network will prove nonexistent. Is there a chance that the probe will expose the driving mechanisms behind the Kosovo independence, which admittedly shocked even a person as experienced and hardened as Marty? The shock was caused not so much by the extent of the activity of illicit human organs traffickers, smugglers, arms dealers, and likewise fighters for Kosovo independence as by the fact that Western governments and respectable intentional organizations routinely helped to cover up the crimes.
In December, 2010 the PACE Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights decided to launch a series of regional and international-level investigations into disappearances of people, human organs trafficking, corruption, and the merger between organized criminal groups and political circles in Kosovo. The PACE Committee even described the delay of the probe into war crimes and human organs trafficking as outrageous and unacceptable.
However, the investigation is proceeding at a snail pace in anticipation of the PACE winter session. Formally, it is undertaken only by the EU civilian police mission in Pristina, but the mission is churning out documents which look more like declarations of intentions than like serious investigation reports. One gets an impression that at the moment the EU priority is to maximally disguise the anti-Serbian character of the crimes committed by Albanian separatists and the involvement of the Kosovo administration in the corresponding offenses.
Currently the story of Turkish surgeon Yusuf Sonmez who was arrested recently in Istanbul based on an international warrant but released shortly is sold as the main intrigue. EU prosecutors Jonathan Ratel and Guido Estreich plan to interrogate him in Istanbul and, according to Serbian media, have supplied three boxes packed with documents to their Turkish colleagues. Belgrade's Vecherne Novosti says the documents are supposed to convince the Turkish court that Sonmez was the main surgeon in the group which lured people from Turkey, Kazakhstan, Moldova, and Azerbaijan to the Medicus clinic in Pristina. Strictly speaking, only Turkish courts have jurisdiction over the Sonmez case as Turkey's laws prohibit the extradition of the country's nationals. As for Sonmez, he admits he stayed in Kosovo to perform surgeries but denies any wrong-doing and currently refuses to go to Pristina.
From a broader perspective, the whole story built around the Turkish trail may be tricky. The story of the Pristina-based Medicus clinic and the organ removals performed in it by Sonmez are likely to be only small part of the grim dossier Marty rolled out at the PACE and a narrow reflection of the criminal activity formerly described by ICTY prosecutor Carla Del Ponte and Serbia's law-enforcement agencies. A notorious Yellow House not far from Burrel, in the north of Albania, rather than the Medicus clinic, was the site where most illicit extractions of human organs had taken place. The organs taken from the Yellow House prisoners, most of whom at least 300 people being Serbs, were delivered to the Tirana airport and further smuggled to European clinics. Del Ponte mentioned (and the PACE inquiry now confirmed) that two informants said they helped to bury the dead in the proximity of the Yellow House and at the nearby cemetery. They also told that everything was done with direct involvement of the Kosovo Liberation Army's top officers. Del Ponte quoted a Hague tribunal prosecution report as saying that all those held in Albanian camps by the summer of 1999 disappeared the same summer. The bases of the Kosovo Liberation Army in which Hashim Thaci used to be the political leader also existed in Albania in 1998-1999.
The materials of the Sonmez case also shed light on the human organs trafficking via Turkey and Israel by another criminal network which was headed by the Kosovo government's current healthcare adviser. Evidently, Washington is trying to switch the investigation to this trace and thus divert it from the Kosovo leaders and the whole Kosovo independence project. By the way, Marty is known to have said that due to its inclination to mutual cover-ups - the EU police mission in Kosovo was not the optimal site for probing into the crimes committed by Thaci and his team.
There is yet another reason why the EU might be trying to limit the investigation into the illegal human organs operation to the Turkish trail. At the moment the EU is locked in heated debates over the feasibility of admitting Turkey to its ranks, and the EU Balkan policies including massive financial infusions into Kosovo are drawing heavy criticism. Consequently, a carefully dozed inquiry exposing the Turkish doctor and some background characters from the Pristina political scene could help Brussels to demonstrate intolerance to crime in Kosovo, strengthen its negotiating positions in dealing with Ankara, and at the same time prove that the human organs trafficking in Kosovo was a limited phenomenon which had nothing to do with the Kosovo Liberation Army or the anti-Serbian terrorism.
http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/20...trail.html