Prisoners 'murdered for organs by Kosovo premier'

A report by Council of Europe investigator Dick Marty claims Hashim Thaci, 42, the former political leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army, led an organized criminal network that flourished in Kosovo and Albania and exerted control over the drugs trade and six secret detention centres for a black market in human kidneys.

Kosovo's government has branded the report as "baseless" and described it as an attempt "to tarnish the image of the Kosovo Liberation Army". In a statement, it also accused Mr Marty of bias and "fabrications".

But the draft report to the Council of Europe calls for a full investigation and will be debated by its legal affairs committee next week.

Mr Marty, a Swiss senator, led a Council of Europe team of investigators to Kosovo and Albania in 2009, following allegations of organ trafficking by the KLA published in a book by former UN War Crimes tribunal prosecutor Carla Del Ponte.

He is known internationally for a 2007 probe on behalf of the Council of Europe that accused 14 European governments of allowing the CIA to run secret prisons and conduct rendition flights from 2002 to 2005.

The 55-page report is an attempt to cast new light on the KLA, which was backed by the West in its fight to secure Kosovo's independence from Serbia in 1999.

Mr Marty found there were a number of detention facilities in Albania, where both Kosovans and Serbs were allegedly held once the hostilities ended in 1999, including a "state-of-the-art reception centre for the organised crime of organ trafficking".

The report said the captives had their blood drawn and tested to help determine whether their organs would be suitable for transplant, and were examined "by men referred to as doctors" in the towns of Rripe and Fushe-Kruje. During his 2007 trip to Albania, then-US president George Bush visited Fushe-Kruje.

Mr Marty said his findings were based on testimonies of "KLA insider sources" such as drivers, bodyguards, and other "fixers" , as well as the ringleaders behind the organ trade.

The report, however, does not name any of the sources, or the number of people who were allegedly killed in the process.

The accounts pointed to "a methodology by which all of the captives were killed, usually by a gunshot to the head, before being operated on to remove one or more of their organs", the report said.

And it alleges the captives were first taken to a house in Albania run by an ethnic Albanian with ties to KLA's leadership.

When the surgeons were ready, KLA gunmen would shoot the captives – and their corpses were quickly taken to an operating clinic.

A court in Pristina is hearing evidence from EU prosecutor Jonathan Ratel against seven suspects, including a senior Kosovan health official, accused of involvement in a suspected international organ trafficking network through which vulnerable people across Eastern Europe were allegedly killed for their kidneys.

Five Kosovo nationals, including Ilir Rrecaj, a former senior health ministry official, and Dr Driton Jilta have been charged with trafficking, the unlawful exercise of medical activity and abuse of power.

Kenyan leaders accused over deaths

Six Kenyan leaders including a former minister stand accused of being behind organised violence following the country's 2007 election that left more than 1,000 people dead.

The International Criminal Court's prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo wants judges to charge them with crimes against humanity including murder, rape and torture.

Higher education minister William Ruto is accused of plotting attacks on supporters of President Mwai Kibaki a year before the election.

In a separate case, Mr Moreno Ocampo charged Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta alongside other major figures with murder, deportation, persecution, rape and inhumane acts.