Council of Europe to Debate Kosovo Organ Trade Report

The Council of Europe will discuss allegations of organ trafficking in Kosovo on Tuesday, a debate that will be closely watched in the region and beyond.

Altin Raxhimi

The Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly, PACE, will have a busy schedule this week. It will appoint a judge for the European Court for Human Rights. It will listen to a European journalism union leader speak on sources and law. There will be the roster of heads of state, a usual practice. The Assembly will hold a session on the CoE’s top priority, the abolition of the death penalty. Business as usual.

But the main debate at next week's session in the modernist Palace of Europe, the Council’s headquarters in the French city of Strasbourg, will be the resolution the Assembly is expected to pass to urge investigations into the fate of hundreds of Serbs and Kosovo Albanians who went missing after the end of the Kosovo war in June 1999.

MPs will debate a resolution based on a report drafted by CoE human rights rapporteur Dick Marty, which alleges that members of the Kosovo Liberation Army organised organ trafficking both during and after the conflict in Kosovo in 1999.

The report, released in December last year, alleged that abductions, disappearances, executions, organ trafficking, and other serious crimes were coordinated by leading members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, including current Prime Minister Hashim Thaci.

While the resolution, which was passed by the CoE's Legal Affairs Committee in December, is not binding, it will carry weight if it is adopted.

PACE resolutions are taken into consideration by the European Union, especially when they concern aspiring EU members, several CoE officials told Balkan Insight.

“A resolution is a political statement,” says a CoE official who refused to be named because of the attention surrounding the debate on Marty's report. “But its effects are beyond that, countries generally need to react.”

Serbian President Boris Tadic and Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha will address Council of Europe MPs during the debate on the resolution.

In addition, another resolution will be discussed based on a report drafted by Jean Charles Gardetto, which alleges that witness protection in Kosovo is terribly inadequate, claims that overlap with allegations made in the Marty report.

MPs will also vote on whether to add proposed amendments to the resolution. Marty’s team is expected to clarify that EULEX should be responsible for investigating the organ trafficking claims, a recommendation that also been made by several human rights organisations.