Witness describes Kosovo organ harvest

11 Sep 2012, 12:24 pm   -   Source: AAP

A former Kosovo rebel witness has described how he removed a prisoner's heart for the black market in organs during the 1990s Kosovo conflict.

A former Kosovo rebel witness has described how he removed a prisoner's heart for the black market in organs during the 1990s conflict, Serbian RTS state television has reported.

The interview was broadcast on Monday a day after Serbia's war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic told AFP his office had a witness who "testified about a medical procedure, done in northern Albania, that consisted of harvesting organs from Serbs kidnapped during the 1998-99 conflict in Kosovo".

"They gave me a scalpel. I put my left hand on his chest and began cutting. When I got near the bottom (of the ribs), the blood started pouring," the witness, whose face was not shown and whose voice was distorted, told RTS.

"As soon as I started cutting, he began screaming not to kill him and then he lost consciousness. I don't know if he fainted or died," he said, apparently speaking in Albanian with his words subtitled in Serbian.

Claims of organ harvesting by the former rebel Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) during and after the conflict are being investigated by the EU-named US prosecutor John Clint Williamson and Belgrade said he was informed about this witness.

Council of Europe rapporteur Dick Marty alleged in 2010 that senior KLA commanders - including current Kosovo prime minister Hashim Thaci - were involved in illegal organ trafficking.

The report said that organs were taken from the bodies of prisoners, many of them Serbs, held by the KLA in Albania at the time.

Thaci as well as Albania have denied the accusations and condemned Marty's report, as well as Sunday's revealing of the witness and his claims.

The witness, with only his hands and torso visible, explained in detail how he had been trained by "doctors" to harvest a heart from a prisoner at an undisclosed location.

"He (a doctor) told me what should I do on the body... to make a cut from a throat to the end of ribs," the witness described the impromptu training organised several days before the surgery.

Vukcevic told AFP the victim was a Serb prisoner and the operation had been carried out near the northern Albanian town of Kukes.

The victim, a man in his twenties, was tied to tables in a school classroom by four rebels.

"When I came closer he was trying to get away but they tied him more. He began crying, begging,'God, do not slaughter me, do not kill me!'" the witness said.

The man said two doctors had also been present at the scene, with a cooling box for transporting organs.

"When I finished the first cut, I was told to make another one, a cross section ... The third line the doctor did himself seeing that my hand was shaking. He told me not to worry," the witness said.

A doctor "put both his hands into the body, pulled and opened it" while another man had brought the cooling box.

"We cut veins and when I took the heart, it was still beating... I put it in the box" for transport, he said.

Seven people, mostly doctors, are on trial before an EU-run court there on charges of illegally transplanting organs at the Medicus Clinic.

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