MOSCOW, December 3 – RAPSI, Ingrid Burke. Kosovo and Albania called on international authorities to launch a special investigation into alleged abuses associated with former war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte’s decision to indict recently acquitted former Kosovar prime minister Ramush Haradinaj.

Both governments cited statements recently made by International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) prosecutors claiming that Del Ponte – who formerly served as chief prosecutor to the UN tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia – lacked sufficient evidence to launch these charges in the first place.

Albania’s statement was fairly limited in scope, reiterating its satisfaction with Haradinaj’s acquittal and calling on the relevant international bodies to probe Del Ponte’s work surrounding the indictment.

Kosovo’s statement contained a broader range of criticism. In a release issued on the heels of Haradinaj’s acquittal, Thaci’s office boasted that the ICTY decision “is the best proof that the Kosovo Liberation Army engaged in a just war for freedom and did not commit the crimes for which we have been unfairly accused.”

Sunday’s statement blames Del Ponte for having abused her authority in the case against Haradinaj, a 2003 ICTY case against Fatmir Limaj, and in the context of the “fabrications” that led to a Council of Europe report implicating Thaci, Limaj, and others of various levels of involvement in an organ trafficking ring during the Kosovo war.

Marty report

The report at issue was drafted by Swiss politician Dick Marty and released in December 2010. It was then adopted by the Council of Europe the following month, resulting in the creation of a special investigative unit under the competence of the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo [EULEX]. The report begins by letting it be known that significant weight had been given to claims made by Del Ponte: “The Parliamentary Assembly was extremely concerned to learn of the revelations by the former Chief Prosecutor of the [ICTY], who alleged that serious crimes had been committed during the conflict in Kosovo, including trafficking in human organs, crimes which had hitherto gone unpunished and had not been the subject of any serious investigation.”

In the introductory comments, Marty points specifically to Del Ponte’s 2008 memoir, which has been published in English under the name Madame Prosecutor: Confrontations with Humanity’s Worst Criminals and the Culture of Impunity.

The outspoken Del Ponte explained that while serving in her official capacity with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), her office received information “from a team of credible journalists” claiming that in the summer of 1999, between 100 and 300 KLA abductees were transported into northern Albania. The memoir explains, “some of the younger, fitter captives, who were kept well fed, examined by doctors and never beaten, were transferred to other holding facilities.”

The abductees were then allegedly taken to a room where journalists reported that doctors extracted vital organs in an improvised clinic, which were in turn transported to Tirana’s airport for sale on the black market.

According to the memoir, these prisoners were made aware of what lay ahead while in detention: “Victims deprived of only their first kidney were sewn up and confined again inside the shack until they were killed for their other vital organs; in this way, the other captives in the shack learned of their approaching fate; and they reportedly pleaded in terror to be killed immediately.“

Haradinaj acquittal

Initially, Haradinaj was charged with 17 counts of crimes against humanity and 20 counts of violations of the laws or customs of war. Former KLA officers Idriz Balaj and Lahi Brahimaj were charged with all but two of these counts alongside their former commander. In April 2008, the ICTY acquitted Haradinaj and Balaj of all charges, and acquitted Brahimaj of all but two charges. The latter was sentenced to six years.

The prosecution appealed the decision, demanding that the trial chamber's refusal to provide additional time to accommodate two key witnesses constituted a breach of fair trial rights. In July 2010, the ICTY appeals chamber granted in part the prosecution's request, calling for a retrial against Haradinaj and Balaj on six of the indictment's counts of violations of the laws or customs of war. The charges at issue on retrial included cruel treatment, torture, and murder.

On November 29, the ICTY issued its decision acquitting Haradinaj and his accomplices on all counts. While the tribunal found that numerous of the charges of war crimes committed against Kosovo Serbs, Albanians, and Roma/Egyptians could be substantiated, they found that the prosecution failed to provide adequate evidence linking the defendants, either individually or as members of a joint criminal enterprise, to their commission.

As previously reported by RAPSI, the ICTY prosecutors lack any authority or mandate such that would allow them to launch a new investigation or revive an old one into allegations that ethnic Albanian rebels harvested the organs of prisoners of war in the aftermath of the Kosovo conflict.