Thaci - KLA - Kosovo - Albanian organ harvesting crimes and investigations

[Magda Hassan]

KLA Death Camps, on Land and Sea Former KLA fighter claims that kidnapped and imprisoned Kosovo Serbs had their organs extracted for sale not only in Albania, but also on the ships sailing through the international waters, as well as in Italy, North Africa and Middle East. In its latest edition, Belgrade weekly NIN carries statement of a mercenary and former member of the KLA (UCK, Kosovo Albanian terrorist formation) with initials I.T, who testified about transporting one group of captured Kosovo Serbs to Tirana and Durres in Albania where, with the help of “common” human traffickers, he transferred them to a ship which sailed out to international waters of Adriatic Sea. According to the witness, that is where surgeons, mainly from Western countries, “dismantled them to their constituent parts”, as the operation of extracting vital organs for sale was referred to by the KLA. This KLA member, whose name is known to NIN redaction and who is responsible for multiple kidnappings and murders committed in 1999, testified that he drove two waste disposal trucks from Kosovo through Paštrik. One carried the corpses of killed Kosovo Serbs, while in the second he transported the kidnapped Serbs who were still alive. They were first tortured and then killed in KLA death camps in Tropoje and Peshkopi, in Albania. The main individuals responsible for transfer of victims from southern Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija, according to the witnesses, were Daut Haradinaj (Ramush Haradinaj’s brother), Sami Lushtaku and Jakup Krasniqi. One Albanian witness, who was imprisoned in the KLA camp Lapushnik, testified that Krasniqi and Hashim Thaçi (current “prime minister” of Kosovo province, appointed by the US-led NATO) directly participated in tortures in the camp, and are responsible for murders of the kidnapped Serbs imprisoned in Lapushnik. According to the witnesses, in organ harvesting and trade, KLA was also being helped by some mujahedeen with “good connections” in the Middle East hospitals. Some KLA members who participated in the removal of bodies of the killed Serbs from Kosovo, claimed that a number of captured Serb soldiers, after torture, were dismembered in Kukes, and their remains have long been buried in the Kukes city cemetery. Soon after the war, it was discovered some of the captured Yugoslav Army soldiers ended up on surgical tables in Valona (Vlore, Albania) hospitals, where their organs were harvested for the benefit of the rich buyers from Western Europe and Middle East states. Others were transported by ships to Italy and North Africa, where they were used in the same way, and the same harrowing fate befell Kosovo Serb civilians who were kidnapped in 1999, after Yugoslav Army withdrew and NATO took over the safety and governing of the Serbian province. Pound of Flesh According to data collected by NIN, Kosovo Albanian harvesting and trade of organs started in 1998, with kidnapping of Serbs from Belacevac mine, most of whom were killed in death camps where the mujahedeen were stationed, in suburbs of Kukes and Bajram Curri in Albania. Information about the mass graves on the mountain Cemernik, in southern Serbia, is of special interest, making this an important location, since it points to the organ traders’ route through Macedonia, toward Bulgaria, Turkey, Moldova and the Arabian Peninsula countries. One of the most morbid details the report reveals is information about some Kosovo Albanians who carried out their own kidney via this route, extracted in order to “repay debt” to certain KLA members with their own flesh. As the investigation run by Serbian War Crimes Prosecution progresses, the notorious “yellow house” of horrors in the town Burrel in north Albania has been reduced to only one sequence in a much bigger tragedy, being that the KLA had branched their organ harvesting “business”, spreading it to Bulgaria, Macedonia, Turkey, Middle East, Italy, Germany and Moldova, in addition to various locations in their native Albania. Furthermore, the number of victims who were used in this way and diminished to a status lower than the cattle is far greater than 300 victims mentioned in Carla Del Ponte’s book. The report reveals that Hague tribunal’s team of investigators which in February 2004 visited the yellow house — believed to be one of the places where the organ extraction surgeries were conducted — had found traces of blood not only in the basement and ground floor of the house, as it was published, but also on the upper floor. Moreover, they have found unmarked grave sites near the house. Apart from burying the remains of kidnapped Kosovo Serbs who had their vital organs extracted for sale in the vicinity of their training, prison and death camps, KLA was also hiding bodies of these victims by burying them with remains of their fighters, like at Qafa Prušit and Morina (both on border between Serbia and Albania), as well as in the village and city graveyards throughout Kosovo province and Albania.