The face of a drug and organ smuggler? Kosovo Prime MInister Hashim Thaci
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An update on this story.
"US prosecutor to probe to probe Kosovo organ trafficking"
PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) — A U.S. prosecutor will investigate claims that Prime Minister Hashim Thaci allegedly led a criminal network that sold organs of civilian captives during the 1998-99 Kosovo war, the EU's mission in Kosovo said Monday.
John Clint Williamson was named lead prosecutor in a task force set up to investigate allegations raised in a report last year by Council of Europe investigator Dick Marty, the mission said in a statement.
Marty has alleged that Thaci and other rebel commanders of the Kosovo Liberation Army ran detention centers in Albania's border with Kosovo, where civilian captives, including Serbs, were killed and their organs sold on the black market during Kosovo's war for independence from Serbia.
Thaci has denied the allegation and said he is ready to cooperate with any investigation into the claims.
Williamson was the head of Kosovo's Justice Department in 2001-2002 when the territory was under the administration of the United Nations and was tasked with overseeing Kosovo's prisons and the justice system. He then served as U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues.
This strikes me as a potential red flag. The prosecutor used to preside over Kosovo's Justice Department not long after these barbaric crimes are alleged to have taken place? Doesn't that look a little too close for comfort?
Williamson will also investigate claims that Kosovo's top leaders are bosses of a criminal network dealing in narcotics, EU rule of law mission spokesman Nicholas Hawton said.
The U.S. prosecutor is to head a team of about two dozen investigators and justice workers and will also have an office in Brussels, the seat of the European Union.
The hotseat of the European Union, that is, where said prosecutor will have any number of EU officials exerting various forms of pressure on him (voodoo?) not to find anything, no?
Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in 2008, a move that has been backed by 80 countries, including the United States and most nations in the EU. Serbia says it will never recognize the new country.
Classified U.N. documents, which were made public by The Associated Press earlier this year, suggest the U.N. mission in Kosovo was aware of the organ trafficking allegations as early as 2003 when alleged witness statements where made available to U.N. investigators.
U.N. authorities then briefly investigated the claims in 2004 but never launched a full-fledged probe.
That's called kicking it under the rug.
The claims were first made public in a book by former U.N. war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte who also said hundreds of Serb civilians went missing and are believed to have perished in camps ran by the Kosovo Liberation Army in neighboring Albania's remote north.
Serbia in the past has demanded the U.N. launch a new investigation, accusing the EU mission of being unwilling to tackle Kosovo's top politicians because it might destabilize the fragile territory of some 2 million people.
So far, both the U.N. and EU's rule of law mission — deployed in the country as part of an international agreement following Kosovo's declaration of independence — have maintained that their investigations into the alleged organ harvesting have failed to yield any evidence.
Mais bien sur...