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Denis Macshane

Council of Europe should apologise for smearing Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci after EU report clears him of organ trafficking

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thaci-superJumboBy Denis MacShane

The European Union has said that there is no evidence linking the Prime Minister of Kosovo Hashim Thaçi to organ harvesting and trafficking during the 1999 war of independence which saw Kosovo freed from Serb occupation and oppression.

Clint Williamson, a US lawyer, has concluded after a four-year investigation for the EU that Hashim Thaçi was not involved in killing Serb prisoners and extracting their organs.

This contradicts a notorious Council of Europe report written by a Swiss liberal parliamentarian, Dick Marty. Published in December 2010 the report described in lurid terms allegations that Thaci had been involved in human organ trafficking. The UK's Guardian newspaper was typical of much of European and world press in treating the Council of Europe report as sober and authoritative. Under the headline 'Kosovo PM is head of human organ and arms ring, Council of Europe reports'  the Guardian depicted Thaci as a monster:  “Kosovo’s prime minister is the head of a 'mafia-like' Albanian group responsible for smuggling weapons, drugs and human organs through eastern Europe, according to a Council of Europe inquiry report on organized crime.

“Hashim Thaçi is identified as the boss of a network that began operating criminal rackets in the run up to the 1998-99 Kosovo war, and has held powerful sway over the country's government since.” (14 December 2010)

Other papers carried similar reports and headline attacking Thaci in highly personal terms on the basis of Marty allegation endorsed given global prominence as they were published by Europe’s supreme body charged with defending human right.

The Council of Europe report was strongly criticized at the time by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, the British lawyer who had prosecuted Slobodan Milosevic in the Hague and is a world expert on crimes committed in the south-east Balkans.

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In an article published in the London Review of Books, Nice accused Marty and the Council of Europe of swallowing the Serb propaganda line which has always tried to depict the young student leader who became political spokesman and chief negotiator of the Kosovo Liberation Army as a deranged organ harvester who somehow managed to create sterile conditions in the battle-field for the successful harvesting of human organs.

Nice said Marty and the Council of Europe had invented witness statements and relied on hearsay evidence from intelligence agencies with a political agenda. Nice concluded his London Review of Books article with the question were the Marty claims "perhaps, part of a media campaign to obstruct the recognition of Kosovo as an independent state?"

The Marty report was backed by Russian and Serb delegations to the Council of Europe but it is now discredited.  Marty has retired from politics and has refused to cooperate with journalists or investigators seeking to question him on the sources for his allegations against Thaci and why he chose to use the Council of Europe in such a partisan way against an elected European head of government.

Thachi immediately offered to co-operate with any inquiry. Eulex, the EU law and justice commission in Kosovo asked Clint Williamson to carry out an independent investigation. Williamson is a diplomat and prosecutor who served as US Ambassador at Large for War Crimes and had headed the EU Special Investigative Task Force set up in 2011 to investigate the Council of Europe allegations.

Its main report published today completely clears Thaci.  It does confirm that some senior figures in the Kosovan Liberation Army committed war crimes and should be indicted.  This has long been accepted in Kosovo and the Thaci government has always co-operated with the Hague Tribunal in sending any indicted men for investigation and trial.

The Williamson report confirms that war crimes where committed on both side in the intense and bitter conflict that erupted in 1998 after the 20 year long peaceful campaign by Kosovans led by Ibrahim Rugova was treated with contempt by the Milosevic regimes.  Tony Judt, the historian of post-war Europe described ‘Milosevic’s continued mistreatment – massacres – of the Albanians in Kosovo.’ Recently mass grave were discovered in South East Serbia with 250 Kosovan bodies found in them.

Clint Williamson says that the Council of Europe report on war crimes committed by elements of the KLA was accurate. But he finds nothing to associate Hashim Thaci with war crimes, let alone the Council of Europe claims repeated by the world press that the Kosovan prime minister was “responsible for smuggling human organs through eastern Europe”.

There was a later scandal involving a Turkish surgeon who opened a clinic in Pristina where poor people did sell their organs to be used for transplants into rich people in the Middle East with chronic kidney diseases. The clinic was shut down and the doctor prosecuted.

But the Marty claim that Thaci was wielding a surgeon’s knife to extract organs while at the time negotiating at Rambouillet was nonsense in 2010 and is now seen as nonsense today.

At the very least the Council of Europe owes Prime Minister Thachi an apology. Russia has now left the Council of Europe after it was criticized at the April session of the Council’s Parliamentary Assembly over its annexation of part of a Council of Europe member state, Ukraine.

Kosovo and Serbia have now established much better relations as Thaci’s diplomatic efforts to take his country in the direction of the EU pay off.  Serbs in Kosovo participated fully in the June elections and there are now 9 Serb members of the Kosovo parliament – proportionately more than their share of the total Kosovo population.

The Council of Europe can make amends for the smears against Hashim Thaci in its 2010 report by taking steps to integrate Kosovo fully into its work.

Denis MacShane was minister for the Balkans in the UK government 2001-2005 and UK delegate to the Council of Europe 2005-2010. His book Why Kosovo Still Matters was published in 2011 by Haus Publishing, London.

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