KOSOVO – The Associated Press is reporting that the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo, EULEX, has named a US prosecutor to investigate claims brought forth by a Swiss lawyer that Prime Minister Hashim Thaci led a criminal network that sold organs of civilian captives during the 1998-1999 Kosovo war.
John Clint Williamson who currently serves as a Special Expert to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, served previously as the United States Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues.
Williamson will be in charge to investigate the claims brought forth in a draft report presented in December 2010 by the Swiss Dick Marty, member of the Council of Europe.
In the report Marty claims that Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci was a leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), an ethnic Kosovar-Albanian guerrilla which was behind the trafficking.
The report implies that Albanian organized crime may be involved even today, in trafficking. It also cites evidence of organ trafficking in Kosovo and brutal treatment of some 500 Kosovo Serb prisoners before they disappeared, by members of KLA.
Marty, a lawyer from canton Ticino, is known for taking on tough subjects such as uncovering the CIA flights over Europe which cemented his reputation.
Links to other sites: draft report on COE web site, GenevaLunch’s background, EULEX
Update 18:20 Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland has submitted a list of 37 sites around the country to the Council of Europe for consideration as sites worthy of special protection for their biodiversity. The Council’s Emerald network of protected sites was set up under the Convention of Bern in 1979, and requires states to protect biodiversity within their borders. Two sites in the lake Geneva region included on the list are Les Grangettes, in canton Vaud between Le Bouveret, canton Valais, and Villeneuve in Vaud, and the Rhone alluvial complex at Geneva, the Federal Office for the Environment has announced.
