A trial of alleged organ-traffickers in Kosovo will hear evidence from a Swiss human rights investigator who has accused the state’s prime minister of involvement in organ trading in the late 1990s.
Council of Europe rapporteur Dick Marty will testify in the trial of seven people accused of illegally transplanting organs at a clinic in Kosovo in 2008, the year it declared independence from Serbia. In a separate report, Mr Marty claimed to have evidence that Kosovan prime minister Hashim Thaci and other senior rebels were involved with mafia-like groups that killed Serb prisoners and removed their organs for sale in 1998-99.
Mr Thaci, in Washington yesterday to meet US vice-president Joe Biden, denies the claims and says no link has been established between Mr Marty’s allegations and the case being tried by a panel of mostly EU judges in Kosovo.
Defence lawyers oppose Mr Marty’s involvement, but Polish presiding judge Arkadiusz Sedek said they should hear “what sort of information he has and what the sources of this information are”.