War crimes report alleges Kosovo PM had links to organised crime

Calcutta News.Net
Wednesday 15th December, 2010

A Council of Europe report has alleged Kosovo’s Prime Minister once had connections with organised crime, including involvement in human organ-trafficking.

The report, to be discussed by the council's legal affairs committee on Thursday, alleges Hashim Thaci led the "Drenica Group" of the Kosovo Liberation Army, creating a criminal enterprise while in power.

The allegations are that Thaci and members of the Drenica Group exerted violent control over the trade in heroin and other narcotics in the aftermath of the 1999 conflict, creating mafia-like structures of organised crime.

The Council of Europe report states that Thaci had been identified in secret intelligence reports, some from US agencies, as the most dangerous of the KLA’s criminal bosses.

During the conflict that finished in June 1999, it said, the KLA also used detention facilities in Albania to hold scores of "disappeared" people, some of whom allegedly had organs extracted for on-selling by an international organ-trafficking ring.

The report also alleges that between 1998 and 2000, Thaci and other members of his inner circle were linked to assassinations, detentions, beatings and interrogations in various parts of Kosovo.

The report was put together by Council of Europe rapporteur, Swiss Senator Dick Marty, who claimed that Thaci managed his criminal enterprises after having secured political and diplomatic endorsement from the United States and other Western powers, giving him the sense of being "untouchable."

The Kosovar government has aleady denounced the findings of a Council of Europe investigation into organised crime in the country as "slanderous."

On December 12th, Thaci won Kosovo's first election since the country's self-declared independence from Serbia in 2008.

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