Kosovo leader to sue over organ claims

Kosovo's Prime Minister Hashim Thaci is planning to sue a European investigator who claimed in a report he had civilian detainees killed for their transplant organs when he was head of the Kosovo Liberation Army.

By The Newsroom

Published 16th Dec 2010, 22:42 BST

Updated 16th Dec 2010, 22:42 BST

Thaci has contacted lawyers to pursue a libel suit against Council of Europe investigator Dick Marty, said a senior Kosovo official. Mr Marty's report suggests Thaci was a ruthless mafia-style crime boss.

The Kosovo premier has not appeared in public since the report was released on Tuesday.

Kosovo's government has branded the report as "baseless" but yesterday the Committee on Legal Affairs of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe called for a series of investigations into evidence of disappearances, organ trafficking, corruption and organised crime in Kosovo.

In a draft resolution the committee said there were "numerous concrete and convergent indications" confirming that people were held prisoner in secret places in northern Albania and there organs removed in an Albanian clinic for sale.

Kosovo