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Serbia denounces Albanian rejection of organ inquiry
Serbian officials denounced Albania yesterday for refusing to investigate claims that Kosovo Albanians killed Serb prisoners for their organs during the 1998-99 Kosovo war.
- AP
- Published: 23:43 October 29, 2008
Belgrade: Serbian officials denounced Albania yesterday for refusing to investigate claims that Kosovo Albanians killed Serb prisoners for their organs during the 1998-99 Kosovo war.
Albania's top prosecutor said on Monday she would not help a visiting Serbian war crimes prosecutor who is investigating claims of organ-trafficking that surfaced in a book earlier this year by the former chief UN war crimes prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte.
In The Hunt: War Criminals and Me, Del Ponte wrote that, according to her sources, about 300 people were kidnapped during the Kosovo war and transported across the border to Albania where they disappeared. There are reports that some ended as victims of an organ harvesting operation, Del Ponte wrote.
The spokesman for Serbia's war crimes prosecution, Bruno Vekaric, called the Albanian decision politically motivated and said Serbia will hand over its evidence to the Council of Europe, the European Union's top human rights body.
"The Albanian prosecutors made a hasty decision not to take our evidence into consideration, obviously under intense political pressure," Vekaric said.
Thousands of people were killed as Serb security troops cracked down on Kosovo Albanian separatists in the war.
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