Hashim Thaci Implicated in Organ Harvesting from Serb Prisoners

Back in April 2009 I first wrote about allegations of KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) atrocities committed against Serbian prisoners and civilians during the Kosovo War.

It is now being widely reported that the trail leads right to the very top of the Kosovan government:

He was all smiles a few months ago as he honoured Tony Blair for helping to liberate his country.

But yesterday Kosovo’s prime minister was sensationally named as the boss of a brutal mafia network that allegedly specialised in butchering enemies for their kidneys.

He strongly denies the allegations.

In a bombshell report Hashim Thaci was described as ‘the most dangerous’ of organised crime leaders who engaged in assassinations, beatings, drug smuggling and a weapons racket.

Most macabre are testimonies alleging how his mafia network harvested human organs from kidnapped prisoners, who pleaded not to be ‘chopped into pieces’ before they were shot dead by henchmen.

Their kidneys and other organs were removed and sold in a deal with an Albanian clinic.

The claims about the country’s premier come as a slap in the face to those who supported Britain’s efforts to free Kosovo and help its rebel leaders to power.

Actually, it was well known even at the time that the KLA was a brutal criminal racket and terrorist group.

As its leader, it is only logical that Thaci would be involved.

Of course, this information was hushed up at the time because it didn't fit the "Serbs are evil" and "Albanians who have colonised and wrested control of Kosovo are angels" narrative.

Remind me again - what exactly did we "free" Kosovo from?

It was a province of Serbia. It's now run by gangsters and wishes to be absorbed into the far more violent, corrupt and backward state of Albania.

If the US government decided to bomb London until we gave up control of Yorkshire to a rebel government backed by Pakistan, would the Daily Mail describe that as "liberating" or "freeing" Yorkshire?

The article continues:

Dick Marty, the Swiss senator who wrote the report, said he felt ‘moral outrage’ as he allegedly discovered how Thaci’s ‘Drenica Group’, a faction of the KLA, was implicated in harvesting human organs.

He claimed captives were held in a secret network of six detention facilities in lawless northern Albania, near its border with Kosovo. In one case, a ‘handful’ of men were held in a farmhouse in the town of Fushe-Kruje.

The report states: ‘As and when the transplant surgeons were confirmed to be in position and ready to operate, the captives were brought out of the “safe house” individually, summarily executed by a KLA gunman, and their corpses transported to the operating clinic.’

‘At least some of these captives became aware of the fate that awaited them. Some are said to have pleaded with their captors to be spared the fate of being “chopped into pieces”.’

Some victims were allowed to live, minus their robbed organs.

Well, infidels are expendable, aren't they? If only all the fearless, truth-seeking Western journalists who descended on the area at the time, desperate for the tiniest hint of dirt on the Serbs, had known.

The good news is that "lawless" Albania has just been given £320 million by the EU, out of an "accession fund" to which Britain contributed about £1.1 billion. This, despite the fact that no negotiations to admit Albania are currently being held, and it is widely acknowledged the money will simply be abused.

The EU, in its eternal and benevolent wisdom, has also relaxed visa rules for Albanians and Kosovans.

Who says crime doesn't pay?

Albanian Gang Killer Found in London

Worse than that, his brother is still on the run.

When Albania is actually a member of the European Union, perhaps we can look forward to cases like this on a more frequent basis.

From The Evening Standard:

A suspected Albanian gangster wanted for two attempted murders has been arrested hiding out in London.

Admir Doda, 33, was seized by officers from Scotland Yard's extradition unit at a semi-detached house in north London.

His younger brother Gentian Doda — who is wanted for a double murder — is also thought be on the run in the capital.

Admir, whose nickname is Miri or Mirja, is now awaiting legal proceedings to extradite him to Albania. He is accused of firearms offences and two attempted murders in his homeland.

Scotland Yard said Doda was arrested at an address in Girton Avenue in Kingsbury. He is believed to have been under surveillance for several weeks.

It is the second time that Doda has faced extradition from London. In 2003 he was extradited by Italian police in connection with a murder of an Albanian man.

He was released when the trial against him collapsed after witnesses refused to testify.

According to an international warrant sent by Interpol to Scotland Yard, Doda is wanted for five other offences involving military-style weapons, including an automatic shotgun. His photo and other details are listed on an Interpol “wanted” website.

Detectives are still hunting Doda's brother Gentian, 31, who is wanted for killing two men in a revenge attack.

Gentian is one of the Albanian police's 10 most wanted fugitives. He has been sentenced to 25 years in jail in his absence for “crimes against life and health” including a 1997 attack in which he and four others shot and killed two men.

The gangster was recently named in a Crimestoppers appeal for 17 international criminals who are believed to be hiding in the UK, eight of whom were Albanian.

Police sources believe that the two brothers work closely together and suspect both may have been in London.

Albanians gangs have been an emerging force in London's criminal underworld for the past decade.

For years senior officers feared an explosion in gang violence as rival groups fought for control of territory and the spoils of crime.

In Soho, Albanian gangs took control of about 70 per cent of the vice trade but have since expanded across London and into other cities.

They are a major force in human trafficking for prostitution and more recently, have moved into the heroin trade.

According to sources Gentian Doda is suspected of being part of a criminal organisation in Northern Albania known as the Kola Gangs syndicate.

Albanian Villagers Block Harvested Organs Probe

From Expatica:

Tirana -- Albanian villagers stopped a team of European investigators from approaching a house where Kosovo rebels allegedly harvested the body organs of hundreds of Serbs 10 years ago, reports said Tuesday.

"The residents of the village of Ripa blocked the road for two hours (on Monday) and prevented Council of Europe investigators entering the Katuci house without a warrant issued by Albanian prosecutors," News 24 television said.

The investigators, overseen by Dick Marty, rapporteur of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly's Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, were forced to give up the attempt to visit the Katuci family home in the Balkan country's north.

The Council of Europe is yet to comment on the incident.

Marty was in Albania's capital Tirana at the time of the incident, which came at the end of a week-long investigation that also took him to Serbia and Kosovo.

His team is investigating Serbian allegations the rebels killed up to 500 of its citizens in Albania for their organs to be sold abroad after they were kidnapped during the 1998-1999 war in neighbouring Kosovo.

The conflict between Kosovo guerrillas and forces loyal to late Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic left around 10,000 people dead, most of them ethnic Albanians from the breakaway southern Serbian province of Kosovo.

The claims arose in the memoirs published last year of former UN chief war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, who wrote the organs were removed at a "yellow house" since identified as the Katuci family's.

Del Ponte's book prompted the Council of Europe to reopen the case briefly investigated by her office five years ago.

Albania's Justice Minister Enkeiled Alibeaj told AFP last week that his country was "open to all demands for an investigation in accordance with the criteria" of a Council of Europe convention.

But the owner of the yellow house, Abdulla Katuci, told News 24 that Marty's team was prevented from entering his home because they had "no legal mandate and we do not know who they are.

Seeing as Serb crimes were so hotly pursued, I tink it is an outrage that this investigation is seen as pretty much optional.

Can you imagine the outcry if the Serbs had done this to the Albanians?

Forced Conversions and Radicalisation in Bulgaria

Bulgaria fell under the Islamic yoke in 1393, and it wasn't free of Ottoman and Muslim influence in any meaningful sense until the late 19th Century.

Here is an account from Wikipedia:

In 1393, the Ottomans captured Tarnovo, the capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire, after a three-month siege. In 1396, the Vidin Tsardom fell after the defeat of a Christian crusade at the Battle of Nicopolis. With this, the Ottomans finally subjugated and occupied Bulgaria.^[29][30][31] A Polish-Hungarian crusade commanded by Władysław III of Poland set out to free the Balkans in 1444, but the Turks defeated it in the battle of Varna.

Some accounts of the five centuries of Ottoman rule highlight its violence and oppression. The Ottomans decimated the Bulgarian population, which lost most of its cultural relics. Turkish authorities destroyed most of the medieval Bulgarian fortresses in order to prevent rebellions. Large towns and the areas where Ottoman power predominated remained severely depopulated until the 19th century.^[9]

The new authorities dismantled Bulgarian institutions at anything above the village or communal level, and merged the separate Bulgarian Church into the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople, although a small, autocephalous Bulgarian archbishopric of Ohrid survived until January 1767.

Bulgarians in the Ottoman empire had to endure a number of disabilities; they paid more taxes than Muslims, they lacked legal equality with Muslims, they could not carry arms, their clothes could not rival those of Muslims in color, nor could their churches tower as high as mosques.^[32] Bulgarians who converted to Islam, the Pomaks, retained Bulgarian language, dress and some customs compatible with Islam.^[30][31]

Well, it seems that despite Bulgaria's membership of the European Union, Muslim influence is again on the march - but this time the threat isn't from Turks but Saudi Wahabists.

Here is an article by a Bulgarian MP which tells of the situation in some of Bulgaria's southern villages:

Despite Bulgaria's European Union membership, some regions of the country need a second liberation from Ottoman yoke, the Bulgarian Member of the Parliament (MP), Yane Yanev, stated, cited by the Bulgarian news agency, BGNES.

Yanev, who is the leader of the opposition "Order, Law, Justice" Party (RZS) spoke Monday in Blagoevgrad as reported by the local BGNES correspondent.

The leaders of RZS visited Monday several villages in Southern Bulgaria to meet with alarmed teachers and parents, who have presented concrete evidence of the imposed conversion to fundamentalist Islam in the region.

The example of the village of Ribnovo, in the Gurmen municipality, has been presented as the most striking one. In Ribnovo, the school principal, Feim Issa, had imposed full dictatorship on the teaching staff, forcing them to wear traditional Muslim clothes, and encouraging female student to the same. Issa has been illegally appointed as principal with help of the local mosque's leaders and is actively supporting the religion teacher at the school, Murat Boshnak.

Boshnak is, reportedly, an individual with suspicious past and unclear educational background. He is not holding even a Bulgarian high school diploma, but has graduated from a religious school in Skopje, Macedonia. Ribnovo residents allege that Boshnak has specialized in Saudi Arabia and is forcefully making parents to sign requests for their children to study the Islam. He is also demanding that children address him as "aga' instead of "gospodin" (Mister), had prohibited girls from attending the last prom in civil attire and issued a ban on celebrations.

Boshnak later organized a trip to Turkey with funds from an Arab foundation. Only one girl had attended the prom. Parents, who refuse to follow the fundamentalist rules, are being cursed during services in the local mosque.

Yanev had established similar examples in the village of Satovcha, where the school principal regularly attended classes in radical Islamism in an illegal local fundamentalist school. The principal was currently on maternity leave and, in order to keep the school under control, had appointed her own husband to replace her.

The residents of the villages visited by Yanev are not Turks; they are all Bulgarian-Muslims, speaking only Bulgarian language.

The RZS leader stated he was appalled by the extreme violations of the rights and freedoms of Bulgarian citizens, embedded in the Constitution. RZS distributed to the media video postcards, showing how radical Islam is quickly taking roots in the country, under the courteous watch of the ruling tri-party Coalition.

Yanev and his colleague Dimitar Abadzhiev vowed to signal the State Agency for National Security (DANS) about the citizens' rights violations in the region, which, they say, are sabotaging European values and leading the way of Islam in Europe.

I think this situation makes a very important point; once Islamic influence is entrenched, it does not die.

If Bulgaria, with just over 12% of its population Muslim, is a bridgehead for Islam in Europe, then what of Turkey and its aspirations to join the EU?

More importantly, what about the fact that Muslim Albania has already applied to join, and this was not really covered in any great depth by the media?

The future of Europe has the potential to be bleak as things stand, without inviting these Trojan horses to join.

New Revelations of KLA Atrocities in Kosovo

The BBC has released the findings from a report it conducted into civilian casualties and mistreatment in Kosovo, both before and after the conflict.

It confirms claims that the KLA, a violent, criminally backed terrorist organisation, abducted, severely mistreated and in many cases killed ordinary civilians.

Both Serbs and Roma were ethnically cleansed from certain areas, and ethnic Albanian political rivals were also tortured and killed.

Many of the abuses inflicted on non-Muslims and non-Albanians by the KLA are virtually unheard of in the West - during the 1999 Kosovo War a careful black and white image of the 'bad Serbs' and 'good Kosovars' was constructed by the media.

Some reports suggest that the Western media was more biased and centrally controlled than that coming out of Belgrade, because the reporters had to embed themselves with NATO and do as they were told in order to remain.

Here's what the BBC found:

The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) abducted civilians in Kosovo who were then mistreated and in some cases killed, a BBC investigation has found.

Sources told the BBC that Kosovo Serbs, ethnic Albanians and gypsies were among an estimated 2,000 who went missing.

This took place both during and after the war in Kosovo, which ended in June 1999.
Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, the former KLA political director, has rejected the allegations.

Mr Thaci said he was aware that individuals had "abused KLA uniforms" after the war, but said the KLA had distanced itself from such acts.

He added that such abuse was "minimal".

Predictable. The witness testimonies, including those from Albanians, contradict him:

The BBC News investigation also studies claims that some of those held in Albania were killed for their organs, and that physical evidence gathered by UN investigators in Albania was destroyed by the International War Crimes Tribunal.

A former prisoner of the KLA, an ethnic Albanian from Kosovo who was held in a KLA prison in Kukes, northern Albania, agreed to speak to us on condition of anonymity. His family are terrified for his life.

"They ill-treated people in the corridor," he says. "They also came into the rooms in groups of five or six to question us. And they used knives, guns, and automatic rifles."

His testimony confirms that people of different ethnic backgrounds were kept there, including Serbs.

He told the BBC: "When a person is mistreated... he cries out 'oh mother' in his own language.
"The nights were very quiet, so you could hear them crying out... while they were being beaten, or afterwards."

Sources in Kukes suggest that up to 18 prisoners held at the camp were killed.

Just across the border, in Prizren, in western Kosovo, Brankica Antic lights a candle for her husband Zlatko.

A Kosovo Serb, she says he was abducted in July 1999 in Prizren by men in KLA uniforms - six weeks after the end of the war, when Nato-led peacekeepers were well established.

At the Monastery of the Holy Archangel near Prizren, candles are lit for loved ones according to the Serbian Orthodox tradition.

Candles are lit either on the top shelf for the living, or the lower, for the dead. Brankica still lights her candles for Zlatko on the top.

"We always light candles for their health and well-being, and we will continue to do so unless and until their bodies are found, and we know for a fact that they are gone," she says.

Zlatko is one of about 400 Kosovo Serbs who were abducted at the end of the war, and are still missing, according to Family Associations of the Missing in Serbia.

Around 150 are still missing from the war period.

A further 1,500 Kosovo Albanians are still missing from wartime, when Serb security forces carried out many, well-documented atrocities against the majority Albanian population.

Hundreds of bodies were found in mass graves in Serbia. Our investigation shows that KLA fighters, too, were guilty of serious human rights abuses.

That's right, who would have thought that a violent terrorist group like the KLA, backed by gangsters and drug money, would do such a thing?

Many commentators have been highlighting these allegations for a long time, but finally, after ten years, the BBC admits the truth - this conflict was far from black and white, and the good guys, the underdogs, actually turn out to be the villains after all.

I welcome this report, but much more needs to be done to highlight the current plight of ethnic Serbs in Kosovo, and work towards a solution which sees at least the Serb-majority areas become part of Serbia.

The Kosovo Conflict

Yesterday marked the 10th anniversary of the beginning of NATO's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.

This incident, ostensibly to stop persecution of Kosovar Albanians by Serbs, was the first in which NATO forces made a pre-emptive attack on a sovereign nation, and it set many uncomfortable precedents in other ways too.

The conflict has its origins in the ancient ethno-religious rivalries between Muslim Albanians and Orthodox Christian Serbs; it seems that whilst the Balkans were part of the Ottoman Empire, many Albanians converted for the purposes of convenience (not being Dhimmis, having full rights and access to higher education and good jobs), whilst the Serbs are noted for their stubborn resistance to all foreign attempts to control them.

Kosovo (Косово or Косово и Метохија) has been seen as the religious and cultural centre of the Serbian nation since the 12th century. Serbs have been living in the region for at least 1,000 years.

However, the Ottoman Empire settled many Muslim Albanians in the Kosovo region, and by the beginning of the 20th Century, a demographic shift was underway in favour of the Albanians.

The idea of a 'Greater Albania' encompassing the regions nations neighbouring Albania with a majority of ethnic Albanians is an ancient one.

Before the NATO intervention, the last person to come close to helping the Albanians achieve this ancient dream was Adolf Hitler; it was promised to them for helping to fight the Serbs. Some anecdotal evidence suggests he is well regarded in Albania and Kosovo as a friend and hero of the Albanian nation, even to this day, despite the fact he only continued Mussolini's policy towards them.

As the Albanian population grew and the Serbian share of the population decreased, the Albanians began to push for more and more autonomy, for example equal status for the Albanian language and the 'Albanianisation' of the education system. However, under Tito, both Albanian and Serbian nationalist groups were brutally suppressed.

A paramilitary force, borne of drug-trafficking money and gang influence, was set up to 'protect' Albanian interests. This was the Kosovo Liberation Army or KLA (Ushtria Çlirimtare e Kosovës or UÇK), formed around 1981.

It was designated a terrorist organisation by many countries, including Britain and America.

By 1998, the KLA was actively fighting Serb and Yugoslav security forces for control of large portions of Kosovo. Both sides carried out atrocities against each other's symbols and civilians. This came about because of a Serb attempt to directly control the province and crush aspiring Albanian nationalist sentiment - but it should be remembered that it was still Serbian sovereign territory, an integral part of the nation.

However, Bill Clinton decided that it really was quite black and white. Clearly, those poor oppressed Albanians, who only wanted to shave off a huge chunk of a sovereign country and give it to another country they ethnically identified with, were being 'ethnically cleansed' and needed NATO air support.

The widely-condemned NATO bombing of Yugoslavia began on 24th March 1999, and continued until 10th June 1999.

Human Rights Watch have only managed to verify 500 Kosovan Albanian civilian deaths at the hands of Serb security forces over 2 years; NATO bombing killed 100 Kosovar Albanian civilians in 3 months, as well as an estimated 500 Serb civilians.

What is often overlooked is that nearly 450 Serb civilians were killed in Kosovo by the KLA. They also started to raid into central Serbia, carrying out bomb attacks and shooting policemen.

None of this is a defence of Slobodan Milosevic or the actions of Serbia; I simply feel that this conflict is seen by too many as completely one-sided, like so many of our recent conflicts some weird rehash of WWII.

It wasn't quite that simple, despite the attempts of Bill Clinton and others to pretend that Milosevic wanted to build a 'racially pure' Serb state, when in fact all he wanted to do was defend the interests of ethnic Serbs outside Serbia and in Kosovo. Certainly, his ambitions were not really any different to those of the KLA.

Much of the civilian exodus which occurred from Kosovo began after the NATO bombing; fighting between Serb forces and the KLA intensified, many fled the bombing itself, and it seems the Serbs did try to drive many out in a last ditch attempt to keep the region part of Serbia.

However, where has this 'noble' conflict led us? We have a UN run state in the Balkans, where even the 'liberated' Kosovar Albanians are increasingly agitating for foreign troop withdrawal.
We have a terrorist organisation running criminal networks all over Europe, claiming it is a legitimate government.

We see increasing 'Islamisation' in Kosovo, as we did before it in Bosnia. The Kosovan population were only nominally Muslim before KFOR rolled in - now in some sections of society Saudi Arabian funding and influence is surreptitiously underway.

There are outrageous attacks on and atrocities against Serbian civilians and their cultural and religious symbols, and they have been growing since the Serbian forces withdrew ten years ago. These and other incidents are an attempt to drive out or marginalise any Serbs who remain. However, this is largely ignored by the Western media - can it be that 'ethnic cleansing' isn't bad in itself and is only an excuse for acting as you wish?

There are also wider geo-political issues; Serbia is still needlessly a pariah state, when it could have been a valuable ally in the War on Terrorism. Relations with Russia are still needlessly sour, and the 'Kosovo precedent' may have been directly responsible for the war in Georgia, with Russia taking a 'two can play at that game' stance. There is also a moral issue - Serbia did nothing in Kosovo that Russia didn't do in Chechnya ten times over - yet apart from a few anti-war and human rights types, most people saw that as a legitimate operation. It occurs to me that on paper, Chechnya has more right to be an independent state than an Albanian Kosovo.

The wider issues are frightening to contemplate; there is no telling the potential damage the 'Kosovo precedent' could do to many currently stable nation states, and I personally feel the genie should have been left in the bottle.

The Kosovo Conflict shows just how dangerous ill informed decisions and 'bombing for peace' can actually be.

It also demonstrates the danger posed by large, unassimilated populations of hostile immigrants and their descendants; if Kosovo is Albania, then why can't the US south west be Mexico? Is it just a matter of time and numbers?

Only time will tell how much damage this idiotic war has actually done.