A hotspot for organ trafficking: Albania - Macedonia - Moldavia - Kosovo!

Albania: The Gift of Life

 

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09 January 2008 As kidney transplants become a reality, experts warn that legal loopholes could turn Albania into a hotspot for organ trafficking. By Blerina Moka in Tirana

Albania: The Gift of Life

09 January 2008

As kidney transplants become a reality, experts warn that legal loopholes could turn Albania into a hotspot for organ trafficking.

By Blerina Moka in Tirana
……………….

Although Prime Minister Sali Berisha has promised to press on with moves to close the legal loopholes on organ transplants, the 1997 law has yet to be amended.

According to Shehu, the Ministry of Health needs to take the initiative by forwarding draft proposals to parliament’s Health Committee.

Albania is often identified as a source country for organ trafficking by various international organizations.

According the American Medical Association,

Albania is one of the countries identified as destination for the so-called “transplant tourism.”

In one of the most notorious cases, an Italian doctor, Mario Spallone, was arrested in Italy in 2004, for an alleged conspiracy to open clinics in the Albanian cities of Durres and Fier with the purpose of harvesting organs that would be eventually trafficked to Italy and the EU.

Dr Sulejman Kodra, the head of the unit for transplants at QSUT, feels uneasy as he admits that trafficked organs could be used in his hospital.

“We shouldn’t be held responsible for such an eventuality,” he says.

“If a donor shows up, we would call a lawyer and fill the necessary paperwork, but we couldn’t be sure of what is happening behind our backs.”

Blerina Moka is a reporter for “Top News” television. Balkan Insight is the online publication of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network. This article was made possible through the support of the National Endowment for Democracy.

Read more: http://balkaninsight.com/en/main/analysis/7271/

Eine sehr traurige Sache im übrigen, wo die Geschäfts Partner bis zum Albanischen Aussenminister Ilir Meta, Fatos Nano und Artan Dade reichte. Genannte Vertreter der Albaner Mafia, sind die engsten Partner der Deutschen Verbrecher Banden aus dem Auswärtigen Amte, welche in der Botschaft Tirana und über die GTZ - BMZ im Albaner Raum aus geschäftlichen Gründen sich aufhalten.
Mazedonien, Bulgarien, Kosovo sind die zukünftigen Reiseländer für “Organ-Handel Tourismus”

Friday, 21.12.2007 | Macedonia

Macedonia part of human organs trafficking

Washington /21/12/ 07:51

The human organs trafficking is on the rise in the east-European countries, including Macedonia, says the latest report of the American Medical Association.

Organ harvesting operations flourish in Turkey, Moldova and Byelorussia, followed by
Macedonia, Russia, Romania, Bosnia, Albania, Kosovo and other east European countries.

A practice of traveling to east Europe for so-called “transplant tourism” has functioning for a while now, the American Medical Association said.

According to the same source, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Kosovo and the region of the former Yugoslavia are the most common destination of this kind of “tourism”.

The most demanded organs include kidneys, lungs, liver, heart valves and even skin

Maxfax vesnik

Europa Bericht 2003

II Explanatory memorandum by Mrs Vermot-Mangold

Introduction

1. During the preparation of this report, the Social, Health and Family Affairs Committee organised hearings with experts in Bucharest in May 2002 and with the secretariat of the Council of Europe Bioethics Division, Division on Criminal Law and Criminal Justice and the Health Division in June 2002. In September 2002, the Committee held an exchange of views with a representative of Europol, and in October 2002 the Rapporteur visited Moldova.

2. During her fact-finding visit the Rapporteur met with people who sold their kidneys through trafficking networks between Moldova, Turkey, Ukraine and Israel. Mrs Vermot-Mangold met with the Moldovan authorities in order to raise the issue of illegal trafficking in organs, corruption and the deteriorating state of healthcare. She also met with representatives of the World Bank, OSCE and donor community to discuss their current initiatives with the government designed to break the cycle of poverty in the country. The Rapporteur is aware that a number of other Eastern European countries face similar problems, making the trafficking in organs a regional, if not a European, problem.

3. In January 2003, the Committee held an exchange of views with Professor Wolf, Head of General Surgery and Transplantation, Saint Pierre Hospital, Strasbourg.

http://assembly.coe.int

Former war crimes prosecutor alleges Kosovan army harvested organs from Serb prisoners

· 300 killed in ‘house-clinic’ in Albania, says Del Ponte
· Demands for investigation over claim in memoirs

* Ian Traynor, Europe editor
* The Guardian,
* Saturday April 12 2008
* Article history

About this article
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This article appeared in the Guardian on Saturday April 12 2008 on p16 of the International section. It was last updated at 00:06 on April 12 2008.

Carla Del Ponte, the ex-chief prosecutor for war crimes in former Yugoslavia, has unleashed a storm of recrimination with allegations of a trade in human body parts in Kosovo and Albania after Nato bombed Serbia in 1999.

Del Ponte claims, based on what she describes as credible reports and witnesses, that Kosovan Albanian guerrillas transported hundreds of Serbian prisoners into northern Albania where they were killed, and their organs “harvested” and trafficked out of Tirana airport.

The Kosovan government, now headed by the former guerrilla leader Hashim Thaci, dismisses the claims as untrue, while Serbia and Russia are demanding a war crimes investigation into the allegations. Del Ponte, now a Swiss ambassador, has been ordered to keep silent by the Swiss government.

The allegations are aired in Del Ponte’s just published memoirs of her eight years as chief prosecutor for the international war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia, based in The Hague.

The Hunt: Me and War Criminals, which is published in Italian and was launched last week, has triggered controversy and added to the tensions between Kosovo and Serbia two months after the Albanian-majority province declared independence from Serbia.

In the book, Del Ponte writes that her investigators visited a house in the remote mountainous region outside Burrel, Albania, which was allegedly being used as an impromptu clinic for the butchering of 300 young Serbs captured by the Kosovo Liberation Army and transported in lorries across the border from Kosovo to Albania.

According to witnesses - including one who said he had driven some of the organs to Tirana airport, and a team of unnamed journalists who investigated the allegations - the victims had their kidneys removed before being killed later and having other organs taken.

“Prisoners were aware of the fate that awaited them, and according to the source pleaded, terrified, to be killed immediately,” Del Ponte writes.

The “house-clinic” was visited by UN officials from Kosovo and tribunal investigators. “The team was shocked by what they saw,” said Chuck Sudetic, a former tribunal official who is joint author of the book. “They found gauze and vials of medicines, including a muscle relaxer used during surgery.”

Witness accounts, indirectly provided to Del Ponte, indicated that some of the victims were buried near the house and at a nearby cemetery. Forensic tests in the house revealed traces of blood, but investigators were unable to establish whether it was human blood. The victims were said to include Albanians and trafficked women from Russia and eastern Europe forced to work as prostitutes.

Del Ponte has long complained that the UN authorities in Kosovo blocked her attempts to investigate war crimes by Kosovan Albanians and she says that the authorities in Albania were also unhelpful. The most senior Kosovan Albanian to be tried for war crimes in The Hague, Ramush Haradinaj, a former prime minister of Kosovo and ex-guerrilla commander, was acquitted last week, sparking bitter protests in Serbia.

According to Del Ponte, a local Albanian prosecutor, who visited the house with the UN team, told her: “No Serbs are buried here. But if they did bring Serbs over the border from Kosovo and killed them, they did a good thing.”

The alleged organ harvesting is said to have been uncovered by journalists who called in the UN in Kosovo and provided information to the tribunal.
…..
Mirko Klarin, an authority on the tribunal and Balkan war crimes at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting ** , described Del Ponte’s allegations as “irresponsible and appalling … This is more journalistic than prosecutorial. She shouldn’t put rumours in her book.”

The Swiss foreign ministry barred Del Ponte, now its ambassador to Argentina, from attending her book launch and ordered her to keep quiet. Senior Swiss figures are calling for her resignation.

“All I know is that she was eager to talk about the book after its publication,” said Sudetic.

According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which mediates confidential talks between Serbia and Kosovo to try to locate and identify those who vanished in the 1998-99 war, there are still 1,967 people missing. The majority are believed to be Kosovan Albanians. The 300 Serbs said to have been transported to Burrel would constitute a large part of the missing Serbs.

While there is widespread scepticism about the veracity of the claims, Human Rights Watch said Del Ponte had supplied “sufficiently grave evidence” to warrant an investigation by the Kosovo and Albanian authorities.

“Perhaps by bringing this story out now, the witnesses will step forward,” said Sudetic. “Perhaps the persons who are responsible for the abductions will worry about the law catching up with them. Any persons who may have taken part in the alleged organ harvesting will sleep a little less soundly.”

Guardian
** “Institute for War and Peace Reporting” = NATO Propaganda Medium - ICG - Georg Soros

Organ Trafficking in Eastern Europe

By: Dr. Sam Vaknin

Also published by United Press International (UPI)

 

A kidney fetches $2700 in Turkey. According to the October 2002 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, this is a high price. An Indian or Iraqi kidney enriches its former owner by a mere $1000. Wealthy clients later pay for the rare organ up to $150,000.

CBS News aired, five years ago, a documentary, filmed by Antenna 3 of Spain, in which undercover reporters in Mexico were asked, by a priest acting as a middleman for a doctor, to pay close to 1 million dollars for a single kidney. An auction of a human kidney on eBay in February 2000 drew a bid of $100,000 before the company put a stop to it. Another auction in September 1999 drew $5.7 million - though, probably, merely as a prank.

Organ harvesting operations flourish in Turkey, in central Europe, mainly in the Czech Republic, and in the Caucasus, mainly in Georgia. They operate on Turkish, Moldovan, Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Romanian, Bosnian, Kosovar, Macedonian, Albanian and assorted east European donors.

They remove kidneys, lungs, pieces of liver, even corneas, bones, tendons, heart valves, skin and other sellable human bits. The organs are kept in cold storage and air lifted to illegal distribution centers in the United States, Germany, Scandinavia, the United Kingdom, Israel, South Africa, and other rich, industrialized locales. It gives “brain drain” a new, spine chilling, meaning.

Organ trafficking has become an international trade. It involves Indian, Thai, Philippine, Brazilian, Turkish and Israeli doctors who scour the Balkan and other destitute regions for tissues. The Washington Post reported, in November 2002, that in a single village in Moldova, 14 out of 40 men were reduced by penury to selling body parts.

Four years ago, Moldova cut off the thriving baby adoption trade due to an - an unfounded - fear the toddlers were being dissected for spare organs. According to the Israeli daily, Ha’aretz, the Romanians are investigating similar allegations in Israel and have withheld permission to adopt Romanian babies from dozens of eager and out of pocket couples. American authorities are scrutinizing a two year old Moldovan harvesting operation based in the United States.

……………..

http://samvak.tripod.com/brief-organ01.html

German

Seit 1991 wurden junge Frauen in Albanien verkauft in die Prostitution nach Italien und Kinder auch männliche vor allem nach Griechenland ab 1998. Zeitgleich ab 1998 wurden in Tirana Kinder entführt und verschwanden spurlos zum Zwecke der Organ Entnahme und Tödung. Ebenso gibt es seit dieser Zeit Angebote an die Bevölkerung sich für ca. 3.000 $ eine Niere heraus operieren zu lassen. Die Entführungen wurden erst ca. 2002 mit der PAMECA EU Polizei Organsation beendet, der Kinder Handel auch im Kosovo wurden inzwischen ebenso erheblich reduziert. In Albanien haben sich die Dinge inzwischen ganz erheblich verbessert und von Entführungen hört man seit 2005 mit dem Regierungs Wechsel Nichts mehr. Bis in 2006 gab es Festnahmen in Albanien wegen Organ Handel und die Festnahme des Italienischen Arztes Mario Spallone in 2004, war nicht die Einzige von einem Italiener in der Sache. Und wie aufgeführt und seit Jahren bekannt, gibt und gab es Privat Klinken auch in Durres und Fiere, wo Organe gegen Geld entnommen wurden. Vielleicht hat sich ja der EU-Kommisar Verheugen - SPD eine neue Niere in Rumänien besorgen lassen, und dafür durften die dann mit dem ganzen Politischen Ganoven Pack wie die Bulgarische Mafia EU Mitglied werden.

Aber wenn Europas Top Mafia Bosse Deutsche Politiker sind, dann wird selbst aus diesen International bekannten Reports und Fakten noch schnell ein Geschäft und eine Studie gemacht, indem die Verbrecher Organistion GTZ eine Studie in Auftrag gibt, wo jemand sehr viel Geld in Rechnung stellen kann, obwohl die gute Frau ( Responsible
Division 42 – Governance and Democracy Anna Erdelmann Sector Project against Trafficking in Women ) von krimineller Energie getrieben nur den AMA Report zu 100% kopiert und abschreibt.  Deshalb wird dann gleich eine ganze Sektion mit viel Personal geschaffen und Millionen von Kosten, damit inkomptende Partei Buch Gänger ohne jegliche Qualifiaktion, einfach Weltweit UN und sonstige Reports abschreiben. Die Studie, welche das GTZ Gangster Aufbau Büro in diesem Falle für viel Geld produziert hat.

Dieser Eintrag wurde am 21.4.2008 um 18:01 verfasst und befindet sich in Balkan (Englisch), Balkan. Sie können alle Antworten zu diesem Eintrag über den Feed RSS 2.0 mitverfolgen. Hinterlassen Sie eine Antwort oder einen Trackback-Link zu Ihrer eigenen Homepage.

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