Several NGOs from Kosovo have launched a petition against a report by Council of Europe rapporteur Dick Marty that links top Kosovo officials to organ harvesting and organised crime.
Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci has been accused of threatening witnesses who could back up claims made in the explosive Council of Europe report which alleges Thaci is an organised crime boss.
UNMIK leaders should be charged with contempt of court for concealing evidence in the Kosovo organ trafficking case, Rasim Ljajic, Head of the National Council for Co-operation with the Hague Tribunal, says.
Sali Berisha says Tirana would welcome an investigation into allegations that Kosovo Serbian prisoners were killed in Albania and their organs removed and sold.
Hashim Thaci blames an "anti-independence network" for the allegations of organised crime and organ trafficking leveled against him and other top Kosovo officials.
Serbia "will not allow" the allegations about organ trafficking by the KLA to be swept under the carpet and be "made relative", a top official says.
Albania’s Minister of Interior Lulzim Basha has denied assisting an ICTY expert who travelled to the country in 2003 to investigate claims that the Kosovo Liberation Army harvested organs of Serb prisoners.
Albania’s President Bamir Topi condemned on Friday the Council of Europe report linking top Kosovo politicians to organised crime and organ-trafficking, as baseless and hearsay.
Outgoing Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci said in a press conference on Thursday evening that he and the government will initiate legal procedures against allegations in Dick Marty's report.
The Council of Europe's Legal Affairs Committee today adopted a draft resolution calling for investigations into allegations that top Kosovo officials were part of an organised crime network that trafficked organs.
A politician accused of being a senior figure in Kosovo’s organised crime scene will attend the presentation in Paris of the report which fingers him.
The spokesperson for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton has responded to a report, released yesterday, that alleges Kosovo Premier Hashim Thaci was at the head of a criminal gang involved in the trafficking of organs, arms and drugs.
Tirana has roundly condemned a draft Council of Europe report linking former Kosovo Albanian commanders to organized crime and organ-trafficking.
Amnesty International has called on the EU rule of law mission in Kosovo, EULEX, to open an investigation into the alleged involvement of Kosovo’s Premier Hashim Thaci in the post-war abduction of Albanians and Serbs.
A Council of Europe report linking the Kosovo premier to a crime gang that sold body parts and carried out assassinations is a great victory for Serbia in the fight for truth and justice, says Serbia's deputy war crimes prosecutor.
Background
Kosovo's Organ-Harvesting Controversy
Here is a sequence of events leading up to the organ-trafficking charges in Kosovo and the release of the Council of Europe report.
Fatmir Limaj, Kosovo's Road-Builder
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.
KLA : From Guerilla Wars to Party Plenums
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.
KLA Ran Torture Camps in 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.
Hashim Thaci 'From 'Snake' to Prime Minister
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.
The Drenica Group
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.