Five Found Guilty in Kosovo Organ Trafficking Case
by Zachary Hendrickson
Posted on April 29, 2013
EULEX, the European Union’s organization designed to handle important cases in Kosovo, has found five men guilty for their roles in a major organ trafficking ring operating out of the Medicus Clinic in Pristina between 2008 and 2009. The director of the clinic, Lutfi Dervishi, was sentenced to eight years in prison, the director’s son was sentenced to seven years and three months, and three other men received sentences ranging between one and three years. On the other hand, two former government officials previously attached to the case, including former health secretary Ilir Rrecaj, have been acquitted of charges of abusing official position or authority. (Prosecutors have said they will appeal.) The trafficking ring was discovered and shut down after a Turkish man collapsed at the Pristina airport from complications surrounding the removal of one of his kidneys at the Medicus Clinic.
This man from Turkey was one of scores of donors gathered from throughout Eastern Europe and Asia. These donors were people who lived in “extreme poverty or acute financial distress,” according to the indictment. The special EULEX court heard that individual donors had been falsely promised roughly $19,000 dollars. The organs were afterwards sold, most often to recipients from Israel, for upwards of $100,000. “They were alone, did not speak the local language, were uncertain of what they were doing and had no one to protect their interests,” Judge Dean Pineles, one of a small number of judges sitting on the international panel, told the court on Monday.
This court case has brought international attention to the situation surrounding organ trafficking in Kosovo, a country which has a troubling history with the subject. During the 1998-99 war between Kosovo and Serbia, there was a serious investigation into organ harvesting and trafficking allegedly carried out by the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Dick Marty, special rapporteur for the Council of Europe, released a report in 2011 claiming that there was a strong link between the 2008-09 case and actions carried out during the 98-99 war. A taskforce, appointed by the EU and led by US prosecutor Clint Williamson, is expected to issue a report on the potential linkage between the two cases in 2014.
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/29/five-jailed-kosovo-organ-trafficking Reuters in Pristina via The Guardian)
