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Serbia insists on full probe in organ trafficking

JOVANA GEC
November 04, 2008 11:17 AM

BELGRADE, Serbia-A Serbian prosecutor said Tuesday he has told Albanian officials the locations of suspected mass graves in which Serbs who were killed for their organs were allegedly buried.

Prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic told the Associated Press he gave the information to prosecutors in Albania on a visit last week. He also said Serbia has asked the United Nations Security Council to hand over the findings of the U.N. mission in Kosovo about the allegations.

"This is a topic that deserves to be investigated, to determine whether it is true or not," Vukcevic said.

The allegations that Serbs were killed for their organs first surfaced earlier this year in "The Hunt: War Criminals and Me," a book written by former U.N. war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte.

Del Ponte wrote that she had heard allegations that some 300 people, mostly Serbs, were transported in 1999 by Kosovar guerillas to Albania, where they disappeared. According to the allegations, some of them were killed for their organs, she wrote.

Del Ponte said her team looked into the allegations but was unable to complete an investigation and gather enough evidence for a trial.

Albania and Kosovo have denied the allegations. The European Union has promised to look into them.

Vukcevic said Serbia has information that U.N. authorities in Kosovo have investigated the allegations and sent their findings to the Security Council.

"Certain evidence has been collected," he said, "and we shall see what it is when we receive it."

But in Pristina, Kosovo's capital, a U.N. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss the issue, said the U.N. passed all the information it had to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague in 2002 and 2003, and no substantial evidence had been found to support claims that Serb civilians were killed in Albania.

Serbia wants the international community to pressure Albania to investigate, Vukcevic said.

Thousands of people were killed as Serb security troops cracked down on Kosovo Albanian separatists in the war. The conflict ended after NATO bombed Serbia in 1999 paving the way for U.N. deployment.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in February, a situation Serbia still has not accepted.


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