the washington post
By Chuck SudeticSaturday, January 8, 2011
THE HAGUE
Americans should feel betrayed by the contents of the Council of Europe's report on organized crime in mostly Albanian-populated Kosovo, a country that owes its existence to the United States. The report, authored by Swiss prosecutor Dick Marty, includes allegations that Kosovo leaders have committed heinous crimes and allegations that American and European diplomats and U.N. officials in Kosovo overlooked wrongdoing to preserve "political stability."
Kosovo's leaders have waged an ugly media campaign to discredit Marty and his findings and have threatened to launch a witch hunt against Albanians who aided the inquiry. Washington's voice is needed now to stop the incitement in Kosovo and to turn public opinion toward an international criminal investigation and, if necessary, prosecutions.
The report draws upon Albanian eyewitnesses and insiders as well as Western intelligence and police agencies, and not upon the Albanians' foe, the government of Serbia. The findings speak of the trafficking of drugs and women. They include accounts of the abduction in Kosovo of almost 500 Serbs, Albanians and members of other ethnic groups; the delivery of these kidnapping victims to secret camps in Albania; and the murder of almost all of those abducted, including some whose internal organs were allegedly sold for profit. The report alleges that these killings occurred from mid-1999 to mid-2000, after NATO's bombing campaign drove Serbia's forces from Kosovo. The report names Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, who has for years been America's golden boy in Kosovo, and a number of Thaci's former comrades in the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), an amalgam of local insurgencies that rose against Serbia. ...more...
*Chuck Sudetic reported from the Balkans during the 1990s and worked for the U.N. war crimes tribunal for Yugoslavia from 2001 to 2005. He co-authored Carla Del Ponte's memoirs, "Madame Prosecutor."
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