Motion for a resolution | Doc. 11574 | 15 April 2008

Inhumane treatment of people and illicit trafficking in human organs in Kosovo

Signatories: Mr Konstantin KOSACHEV, Russian Federation, EDG ; Mr Miloš ALIGRUDIĆ, Serbia, EPP/CD ; Mr Luc Van den BRANDE, Belgium, EPP/CD ; Mr Mátyás EÖRSI, Hungary, ALDE ; Mr Andreas GROSS, Switzerland, SOC ; Mr Mike HANCOCK, United Kingdom, ALDE ; Mr Tadeusz IWIŃSKI, Poland, SOC ; Mr Tiny KOX, Netherlands, UEL ; Mr Göran LINDBLAD, Sweden, EPP/CD ; Mr Mikhail MARGELOV, Russian Federation ; Mr Yevhen MARMAZOV, Ukraine, UEL ; Mr João Bosco MOTA AMARAL, Portugal, EPP/CD ; Mr Ivan POPESCU, Ukraine, SOC ; Mr Christos POURGOURIDES, Cyprus, EPP/CD ; Mr Kimmo SASI, Finland, EPP/CD ; Mr Samad SEYIDOV, Azerbaijan, EDG ; Ms Elene TEVDORADZE, Georgia

Origin - Referred to the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, for report: Reference No. 3446 (Standing Committee, 29 May 2008).

This motion has not been discussed in the Assembly and commits only those who have signed it.

The Assembly finds it necessary to pay attention to facts of inhumane treatment of people and illicit trafficking in human organs in Kosovo, as they are described in the Memoirs by Carla Del Ponte, former Prosecutor of the International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) since 1991.

Quotations from the book as covered in the mass media witness, in particular, that militants of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) kidnapped more than 300 people from Serbian enclaves of the province, who had their vitally important organs extracted later. Thus, according to such information by Del Ponte, “those organs … were trafficked through the Rinas airport in Tirana to foreign clinics for paid organ transplantation”. She speaks about “a huge number of documents” confirming possible crimes of the Kosovo Liberation Army. There are signs that the top leadership of Kosovo is involved in such crimes. According to Del Ponte, the prosecutor’s office received the information that in 1998 the soldiers of the KLA seized hundreds of Serbs, Roma, Albanians and representatives of other ethnic groups. “Some of the detained ... were kept in piggeries, were subject to beating, rape, some were executed, the others just disappeared”. According to some publications, there could also have been citizens of other member states of the Council of Europe, in particular, of Moldova, the Russian Federation and Romania.

Till this moment, the ICTY hasn’t expressed its position on this matter. At the same time, the Assembly doesn’t have any grounds to doubt the competency and awareness of the former Prosecutor of the Hague Tribunal on this matter. The Assembly believes that a thorough investigation of facts and consequences, provided by Del Ponte, should be carried out in order to find whether they are true and to re-establish justice for victims of crimes and to find those guilty of committing such crimes. The members of the Assembly are convinced that such monstrous crimes deserve the strongest condemnation on behalf of the European peoples, gathered in the Council of Europe in the common goal to “protect and implementation of ideals and principles which are their common values” (Article 1 of the charter).