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End of the road for Kosovo organ claims? Page last updated at 9:23
GMT, Thursday, 27 May 2010 10:23 UK
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By Nick Thorpe
BBC News, Pristina, Belgrade
and Tirana
Blood was found on the floor of the "yellow house"
For years rumours have
circulated about Serbs abducted and killed for their organs in the
months following the Kosovo war.
Three parallel international investigations, by war crimes
investigators from Serbia, the European Union, and the Council of
Europe, have failed to uncover any evidence that the Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA) trafficked the organs of captives, according to sources close
to each investigation.
Dozens of predominantly Serb captives were allegedly taken to a
"yellow house" near Burrel in central Albania from June 1999 to May
2000, where their organs were systematically removed and sold, according
to accounts presented by Carla del Ponte, former war crimes prosecutor
at The Hague Tribunal in her 2008 autobiography.
But the failure to find either the original sources, or any new
evidence since 2004, may mean that the story was unfounded.
The Council of Europe report, due to be published next month by
investigator Dick Marty, is expected to focus rather on political
demands to the governments involved, rather than to uncover new facts.
Distraction
"The fact is that there is no evidence whatsoever in this
case," said Matti Raatikainen, head of the war crimes unit of Eulex, the
European Law and Justice Mission in Kosovo.
Matti Raatikainen says the scandal has distracted from the search
for remains
"No bodies. No witnesses. All the reports and media attention
to this issue have not been helpful to us. In fact they have not been
helpful to anyone."
The main problem, he said, was that the scandal created by the
allegations has distracted attention from the real work of finding the
remains of 1,861 people still missing from the war and its aftermath,
and prosecuting their killers - in Serbia, Kosovo and Albania.
We talked in his makeshift office in a cluster of containers at
the Alpha-Bravo base near Pristina airport, as the latest May storm
battered the roof.
Burly policemen came and went, surprised to find their boss
talking to a journalist. Mr Raatikainen, a quiet Finnish policeman, is
not known for his love of the media.
Loose ends
In 2009, a special BBC investigation found evidence of KLA
detention camps in Albania, especially in the north-east Albanian town
of Kukes. Earlier this month, Eulex made the first arrest in connection
with that case.
Details have also emerged that Albanians suspected of
disloyalty to the KLA were interrogated in a hotel in the Albanian
coastal town of Durres, and transferred to Kukes.
Continue
reading the main story
I still believe something happened
there... but nothing on the scale of what has been suggested
Serbian source
But constant revelations in the Serbian press that new
evidence, or new witnesses have emerged for the organ-trafficking
allegations, have all proven either false, or unsubstantiated.
After the war in Kosovo, American journalist Michael Montgomery
came across former KLA soldiers who said they had transported Serb and
Albanian prisoners, dead and alive, across the border from Kosovo to
Albania.
Three of his seven sources referred to the possibility of
organ-trafficking, and identified the house near Burrel. But Montgomery
was unsure, and handed a summary of his research over to the Office of
Missing Persons and Forensics (OMPF) at the UN Mission in Kosovo.
Sources vanished
A team of UN and Hague Warcrimes Tribunal (ICTY) investigators,
led by Matti Raatikainen, visited the house in February 2004.
A chemical spray, used in a downstairs room, found widespread
traces of blood, of uncertain provenance, on the floor. Family members
offered contradictory explanations.
Medical equipment appropriate for surgical interventions was
found on the rubbish dump.
Some investigators wanted to pursue the case. Others felt the
evidence, even then, was too thin.
Most serious of all, Montgomery's original sources had
disappeared. One was dead, killed in a supposedly unrelated case. The
others could not be found.
Even the Serbian authorities, who have propagated the tale of
the yellow house most consistently, have their doubts today.
"I still believe something happened there," said a Belgrade
source, close to the war crimes court, "but nothing on the scale of what
has been suggested... and possibly not even connected to the KLA".
Mass graves
Considering the apparent lack of evidence, experts suggest the
Albanian government could help kill off a damaging story if only it were
more open.
Investigators are still searching for the remains of hundreds of
victims
UN special rapporteur Philip Alston said in February that "none
of the efforts to investigate have received meaningful co-operation on
the side of the government of Albania".
"In order to get rid of this issue," he urged Albania, "make
available a proposal for an independent investigation and offer genuine
co-operation."
The end of the "fairy-tale" of organ-trafficking, as one Eulex
prosecutor calls it, would still leave war crimes investigators with
plenty to do.
This month, a mass grave was found near the southern Serbian
town of Raska. Three lorry-loads of bodies - around 250 in total -
believed to be Albanians killed by Serb forces in Kosovo, were reburied
there in early June 1999.
The red soil encasing the bodies, according to eye-witnesses,
suggests the bodies were originally buried in the Drenica valley in
Kosovo, and moved to Serbia to destroy the evidence.
Prosecutors say they believe the Serbian military were
responsible. Excavations at the same site two years ago failed to find
the grave, which is now believed to lie beneath a car park and office
building.
Revenge killings
Missing Serbs are also being found in Kosovo. The exhumation of
up to 25 Serb victims of the KLA is due to start later this year in a
coalmine in the town of Obilic/Obiliq. The coal was set on fire, and the
mine shaft destroyed, to hide the evidence.
But the effort to find other victims is proving difficult.
"A lot of potential informants left," said Alan Robinson, joint
head of the OMPF.
"Other persons, who may know the whereabouts of the missing,
may not be willing to talk... out of fear, or lack of interest."
According to Eulex, 2,244 bodies have been identified in Kosovo
since 2001. Of these 301 were "non-Albanian", meaning Serb, Roma and
others.
Some 228 were the bodies of Serbs who went missing after 10
June 1999, the end of the war, at a time of revenge killings by Kosovan
Albanians. In total, around 13,500 are now believed to have been killed
during the conflict, or immediately after it.
Dick Marty's investigation for the Council of Europe into the
organ-trafficking allegations is due to be published in late June.
Exhumations at Raska will begin in August.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/europe/10166800.stm
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