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

[Magda Hassan]

Ten years ago the BBC was too busy creating a media image of the Serbs as the new Nazis when it was the old nazis they should have been reporting on. They seem to have just recently 'discovered' that the Serbs were maybe not so bad after and may after all have just been trying to hold their nation together from the outside interference of others with their own agenda particularly the Nordic Aryan Teutonic Order or NATO as it is more commonly known.

Better late than never I suppose even if the belated coverage is to publicise their new doco. It looks like it is seeking to absolve NATO and other occupying forces of any complicity in these crimes. Those sneeky Albanians were just too dang smart for them. I'm not sure what the BBC aganda is here.

Some recent BBC coverage below:

The Kosovan disappeared




Crossing Continents
Thursday, 9 April, 2009
At 1102 BST on BBC Radio 4

Crossing Continents uncovers disturbing evidence of atrocities by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) during and after the Kosovo War ten years ago.
The headlines about the war have consistently focused on Serb war crimes against ethnic Albanians.
However, after a five-year investigation, Crossing Continents can now reveal another side to the conflict which the world was not meant to see.
Using documents and recorded interviews he has been gathering since 2004, reporter Michael Montgomery reveals what happened after the Nato bombing stopped and the Kosovar refugees began returning to their homes.
Little has so far been established of the hundreds (Edit Magda: thousands actually) of Serbs and other non-Albanians who remain unaccounted for after the war.
Through painstaking examination of the evidence, Michael shows for the first time how some of them met their death and where their remains could be buried.
It is a story of abduction and murder, but this time most of the victims are Serbs, and the alleged perpetrators Albanian, members of the KLA.
He examines how it was that many of these kidnaps and murders took place under the noses of Nato and the United Nations, who were already in Kosovo when the abductions took place.
Secret camps
Michael travels to Western Kosovo, and from there over the border into Albania, following the route along which it is said hundreds of kidnapped men and women were taken to die.
He journeys into Northern Albania, where it is believed that Serbs and others were held at secret camps, and where they were tortured and, in many cases killed.
But some might say those killed within the secret camps were the lucky ones.
In the countryside a few kilometres outside the town of Burrel there is a house where in 2004 a UN forensic science team conducted a search.
Michael was one of only two journalists allowed to be present during the two-day operation. The aim of the search was to seek evidence to support claims that the KLA took several dozen hostages there to have their vital organs removed for sale before they died.
According to documents seen by Crossing Continents, the findings of the forensic experts were of significant interest.
That view is supported in the programme in an exclusive interview with the UN's former top forensic scientist in Kosovo, who took part in the examination of the house.
He supports the allegation that material from the investigation was destroyed by the UN War Crimes Tribunal.
BBC Radio 4's Crossing Continents was broadcast on Thursday, 9 April, 2009 at 1102 BST and will be repeated on Monday, 13 April, 2009 at 20:30 BST.
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Kosovo civilian abuses revealed


By Nick Thorpe
BBC News, Budapest


Witnesses say some KLA victims are buried in Kukes cemetery in Albania

The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) abducted civilians in Kosovo who were then mistreated and in some cases killed, a BBC investigation has found. [Edit Magda: Abducting civillians is not mistreating them? They are only mistreated after being abducted?]
Sources told the BBC that Kosovo Serbs, ethnic Albanians and gypsies were among an estimated 2,000 who went missing.
This took place both during and after the war in Kosovo, which ended in June 1999.
Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, the former KLA political director, has rejected the allegations.
Mr Thaci said he was aware that individuals had "abused KLA uniforms" after the war, but said the KLA had distanced itself from such acts.
He added that such abuse was "minimal".
Testimony
The BBC News investigation also studies claims that some of those held in Albania were killed for their organs, and that physical evidence gathered by UN investigators in Albania was destroyed by the International War Crimes Tribunal.
A former prisoner of the KLA, an ethnic Albanian from Kosovo who was held in a KLA prison in Kukes, northern Albania, agreed to speak to us on condition of anonymity. His family are terrified for his life.
"They ill-treated people in the corridor," he says. "They also came into the rooms in groups of five or six to question us. And they used knives, guns, and automatic rifles."
His testimony confirms that people of different ethnic backgrounds were kept there, including Serbs.
He told the BBC: "When a person is mistreated... he cries out 'oh mother' in his own language.
"The nights were very quiet, so you could hear them crying out... while they were being beaten, or afterwards."
Sources in Kukes suggest that up to 18 prisoners held at the camp were killed.
Missing
Just across the border, in Prizren, in western Kosovo, Brankica Antic lights a candle for her husband Zlatko.

Families light candles in memory of their missing relatives

A Kosovo Serb, she says he was abducted in July 1999 in Prizren by men in KLA uniforms - six weeks after the end of the war, when Nato-led peacekeepers were well established.
At the Monastery of the Holy Archangel near Prizren, candles are lit for loved ones according to the Serbian Orthodox tradition.
Candles are lit either on the top shelf for the living, or the lower, for the dead. Brankica still lights her candles for Zlatko on the top.
"We always light candles for their health and well-being, and we will continue to do so unless and until their bodies are found, and we know for a fact that they are gone," she says.
Zlatko is one of about 400 Kosovo Serbs who were abducted at the end of the war, and are still missing, according to Family Associations of the Missing in Serbia.
Around 150 are still missing from the war period.
A further 1,500 Kosovo Albanians are still missing from wartime, when Serb security forces carried out many, well-documented atrocities against the majority Albanian population [Edit Magda: And the KLA murdered thousands of Albanians who wanted the status quo with Yugoslavia or who would not collaborate with the KLA].
Hundreds of bodies were found in mass graves in Serbia. Our investigation shows that KLA fighters, too, were guilty of serious human rights abuses.
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http://centerforinvestigativereporting.o...vosmissing