Albanian Parliament resolution rejects organ trafficking charges

Soeren Stache / POOL / AFP (arhiva)

Albania’s parliament adopted a resolution on Friday rejecting a Council of Europe (CoE) report which documented organ trafficking during the Kosovo war.

The resolution was adopted late on the night of Thursday-Friday at the initiative of Prime Minister Edi Rama’s Socialist Party. “Albania’s voice on this issue will be heard to Strasbourg (the seat of the European Court of Human Rights),” Rama told the parliament session.

Radio Free Europe quoted him as saying that the author of the report former Swiss Senator Dick Marty was no longer a member of the CoE Parliamentary Assembly, adding that the resolution was not directed at him. “This is about the reputation and dignity of the CoE Parliamentary Assembly which voted to adopt the report because they thought it should be investigated. The investigation did not bring justice to the supposed victims but it did make victims of the leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) because that was its goal to make the KLA a global victim at one of the important moments for Albanian national pride,” Rama said.

Marty investigated claims of organ trafficking by the KLA during the Kosovo war in 1998-99. His report said that Kosovo Serbs and non-Albanians were abducted and their organs harvested inside Albania. The claims in the report were also investigated by the Hague Tribunal but no indictments were made. The leaders of the KLA are now facing trial at the specially-formed court for KLA war crimes but not on charges of organ traficcking. The claims in the report were also investigated by American prosecutor in Kosovo Clint Williamson whose report did not cover organ trafficking but did cover war crimes.

The Albanian Parliament’s resolution said that Marty’s claims “that people were killed to harvest and sell their organs and on the illegal trade in human organs in Albania and Kosovo were unsubstantiated and groundless”.