An EU prosecutor has asked Russia to assist two of its citizens to appear as witnesses in Kosovo's Medicus case, as they are believed to be victims of organ harvesting.
Nick Hawton, a spokesperson for the EU rule of law mission in Kosovo, EULEX, told Balkan Insight on Tuesday that the EU prosecutors are in constant contact with the Russian authorities on the process, and have requested their help in the case.
“A EULEX Special Prosecutor has requested legal assistance from the Russian Federation, specifically for two of its citizens to appear as witnesses in the Medicus Trial. The prosecutor is waiting for a reply to his request,” Nick Hawton said.
The case involves allegations that a group of people brought poor donors and rich recipients to the Medicus clinic in Kosovo and organised and carried out the harvesting of kidneys and their transplant.
EULEX revealed last week that two Russian citizens were believed to be victims of the organ trafficking.
The case of the Medicus clinic was opened by the Kosovo police and the UN force UNMIK in November 2008, and later forwarded to EULEX and the Kosovo Special Prosecutor's Office.
According to the indictment, 30 operations involving illegal kidney transplants were conducted at the Medicus clinic, by luring people from slums in Istanbul, Moscow, Moldova and Kazakhstan with promises of up to €15,000 for their organs, though many never received a cent.
Nine persons in total have been charged with human trafficking, organised crime and the unlawful exercise of medical activities, including university professor Lutfi Dervishi, who is accused of being the ring-leader of the alleged activities.
The Kosovo men named in the indictment were allegedly aided by Dr Yusuf Sonmez, wanted for organ trafficking charges in several other countries, and Moshe Harel, an Israeli of Turkish origin who the prosecution says acted as the gang’s fixer, finding both donors and recipients and handling funds.
Sonmez, nicknamed “Doctor Frankenstein” by the Turkish press, has been arrested and bailed in his native Turkey. He is said to have previously denied organ trafficking and cannot be extradited to Kosovo due to Turkey's policy on extradition.
In the past month a Turkish prosecutor asked for Sonmez to be sentenced to 171 years of prison for the illegal transplantations carried out in the Medicus clinic.
According to EULEX, the trial is set to resume on February 6th, and the prosecutor in charge of the case, Jonathan Ratel, may bring additional charges. It is likely that the two Russians victims will testify via video-link, instead of being brought to Kosovo.
A Canadian man who received a kidney transplant at the clinic is also expected to testify via video-link as a witness.
The Medicus case was linked to allegations that members of the Kosovo Liberation Army sold the organs of prisoners during the 1999 conflict in Kosovo. A Council of Europe report on organ trafficking in Kosovo raised the allegations in December 2010.
Here is a sequence of events leading up to the organ-trafficking charges in Kosovo and the release of the Council of Europe report.
Corruption allegations have not dented the popularity of the KLA- fighter-turned-PDK politician who has made it his mission to transform the country’s traffic arteries.
The Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, was an ethnic Albanian guerrilla group that came to the fore in the mid-1990s, demanding the unification of Albanian territories in former Yugoslavia with Albania.
The Kosovo Liberation Army maintained a network of prisons in their bases in Albania and Kosovo during and after the conflict of 1999, eyewitnesses allege. Only now are the details of what occurred there emerging.
Thaci, born in 1968, joined the Albanian independence cause as a student, becoming one of the leaders of the protest movement in the early 1990s. As the Serbian crackdown intensified, he left for Switzerland, studying history and international relations in Zurich.
Crime gang allegedly headed by Prime Minister Thaci is said to have run a range of mafia-like enterprises, from cigarette smuggling to trafficking in organs.