Kosovo: Prosecutions of Ex-Guerrillas Spark Protests

Protesters took to the streets of the capital in May, angered by the detention of a group of men who had fought with the Kosovo Liberation Army but were now accused by the EU rule-of-law mission of war crimes against civilian prisoners held in a KLA detention centre during the conflict.s ambassador to Tirana, and the current mayor of Skenderaj/Srbica, Sami Lushtaku.The EU mission (EULEX), Bernd Bochard, insisted that prosecutions would not stop.Borchardt said.KLA suspects.fighters.

Torturers and traffickers jailed

among them Latif Gashi, a lawmaker with the ruling Kosovo Democratic Party..commander who is also now an MP, was cleared alongside nine other defendants of war crimes against Albanian and Serb detainees at an improvised jail in Klecka during the conflict.had been found not guilty of the charges.At the end of April, a Kosovo court convicted five men of participating in an illegal organ-trading ring that harvested and sold human kidneys at the Medicus clinic near Pristina.The court found the former owner of the Medicus clinic, Lutfi Dervishi, guilty of organised crime and people-trafficking, sentenced him to eight years in prison and imposed a fine of 10,000 euro. His son Arban Dervishi was convicted of the same charges.The indictment said around 30 illegal kidney transplants took place at the clinic in 2008.Poor people from Turkey, Russia, Moldova and Kazakhstan were allegedly lured to the clinic with false assurances that they would receive up to 15,000 euro for their kidneys.The EU rule of law mission prosecutor in the case said that transplant recipients, mainly Israelis, paid more than 70,000 euro for the kidneys.Two foreign suspects in the case - Turkish doctor Yusuf Sonmez and Moshe Harel, an Israeli citizen - are still listed as wanted by Interpol but remain at large.After the convictions, EULEX launched a new investigation into eight people suspected of involvement in the organ-trading ring.EULEX, said in a statement.although so far no evidence has been uncovered that makes any connection between the traffickers and wartime KLA fighters.

 Little news of the missing

The year began with demands that the Kosovo government increase its efforts to find the 1,726 people who remain missing since the end of the 1998-99 conflict with Serbian forces.The non-governmental Council for the Protection of Human Freedoms and Rights in Kosovo said the authorities should investigate the issue of people who’ve been missing since the war “regardless of their ethnicity” and should bring to justice “all those who contributed to the disappearance of those people”.The issue was raised several times during the year, with calls for the authorities in Pristina and Brussels to increase political pressure on Belgrade to take action.