Is the mud sticking?

KOSOVO marked the third anniversary of its independence on February 17th in sombre mood. Only last July the country's leaders were riding high last year in the wake of an advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice that its declaration of independence had not been illegal. Now their reputations are in tatters.

First came allegations of fraud in last Decembers elections, which angered its strongest supporter, the United States. Soon afterwards, a report produced by Dick Marty, a Swiss politician and former prosecutor, made lurid claims about the involvement of Kosovo's leadership in organised crime. In the last few days two new documents [PDF: download site] have come to light that appear to bolster the most nightmarish of those allegations.

First, a disclaimer. In Balkan politics, the dictum, if you are not with us, you are against us usually applies. Some readers have attacked this blog simply for reporting on the Marty affair. As a fog of confusion, claims and counter-claims swirls over the allegations laid against Kosovo's leaders, we lay out here what is already known about the issue, and what is new.

The allegations

Last December, Mr Marty delivered a report to the Council of Europe that alleged that Hashim Thai, who has just begun a second term as Kosovo's prime minister, was close to people who, after the 1999 Kosovo war, had kidnapped some 500 Serbs, Albanians and others, all of w! hom wer e eventually killed. Some of them, the report claimed, were murdered so that their organs could be harvested and sold. Mr Thai has vigorously denied the claims.

Mr Marty's allegations were not new. Their first public outing was in a 2008 book by Carla Del Ponte, the former prosecutor of the UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague (ICTY), and Chuck Sudetic, a former ICTYanalyst.

Now, however, documents have been leaked to the Serbian press that appear to strengthen Mr Martys claims. They contain transcripts of original interviews with witnesses gathered by a key source known to me and handed overconfidentially in 2003 to the then UN administration in Kosovo (UNMIK). The witnesses in the documents are quoted as saying they believed kidnapped Serbs and others had been killed for their organs.

At the time there was no corroboration for these claims. But they did inspire UNMIK investigators and a team from the ICTY to visit, in February 2004, the now-infamous yellow house in rural north Albania, near the town of Burrel, where the witnesses said the killings had taken place.

A forensic report [PDF: download site] produced by UNMIK says that the team found traces of blood at the yellow house, but that these did not constitute conclusive evidence of criminal acts. Neither ICTY nor UNMIK undertook a search for bodies, and no full criminal investigation was ever undertaken. Yet the traces, as well as medical paraphernalia found outside the house, could have been considered to be corroborative physical evidence of the claims made in the witness statements we now know about.

Why did UNMIK shelve the case? Political expediency, basically. It had to work with the men i! mplicate d by the witnesses on a daily basis. The implications of what a criminal investigation might uncover horrified those in the UN charged with building a modern and stable administration in the post-war territory.

As for the ICTY, its prosecutors concluded that, even if crimes had been committed, they were beyond their jurisdiction because the had taken place after the Kosovo war had ended. Several years later, in a mysterious and embarrassing move for which it has never been properly taken to task, the ICTY destroyed the physical evidence collected at the yellow house. Had it been kept it might have yielded the DNA samples critical for a full criminal investigation.

As Mr Sudetic notes, because neither UNMIK nor the ICTY pursued the case, they were able to claim that they had no evidence to support the allegations. This was not, however, the case for Mr Marty, who conducted a much more thorough investigation. Albanians and others say that Mr Marty was opposed to Kosovos declaration of independence, and claim his report is part of a campaign to smear the new state.

Mr Marty has also been attacked for not revealing details about his sources. He says their lives would be in danger if their identities were known. How convenient, retort the sceptics.

The new evidence

But the new documents will dismay Mr Marty's critics. They make for sickening reading about what happened in Albania after the war (although it is important to acknowledge that the claims they contain have never been tested by a proper criminal investigation). They also include details of the witnesses' identities, although not their names.

The first document is dated October 30th 2003. It is an internal ICTY text containing an annex with the witness statements gathered by the external source that had been sent to it by UNMIK. The second, dated December 1! 2th 2003 , is from the director of UNMIK's department of justice.

A summary of the witness statements in the first document states that between June and October 1999, 100-300 people, mostly Serb men, were abducted and taken to Albania. Between 24 and 100 of them were then taken to secondary detention centres, from where they were moved again to a makeshift clinic where medical equipment and personnel were used to extract body organs from the captives, who then died. The organs were then taken to Tirana airport and flown to Turkey and other destinations.

The document states that the witnesses were all ethnic Albanians who had served in the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Four of them had been involved in the transport of at least 90 Serbs to central and northern Albania. Three of them delivered captives to the house/clinic near Burrel (the yellow house), the document states, two of them said they had helped dispose of human remains near the house, and one said he delivered body parts to Tirana airport.

The document also notes that none of the sources claimed to have witnessed the medical procedures. But they all claim that the operations and the transport of body parts took place with at least the knowledge, and in some cases the active involvement, of mid- to senior-level KLA officers.

At one point, the document quotes the sources as saying that: "The operation was supported by men with links to Albanian secret police operatives of the former government of Salih Berisha." Mr Berisha is, again, Albania's prime minister today.

The names

Significantly, the new documents do not mention Mr Thai's name. But they mention Ramush Haradinaj and his brother Daut. Mr Haradinaj is a former KLA commander and prime minister of Kosovo. In 2008 he was acquitted of war crimes by the ICTY, but he is now being retried on some counts after the prosecution successfully alleged witness intimidation.

Mr Haradinaj is a political foe of Mr Thai. The details revealed in the new documents might cheer the prime minister, as they appear to shift responsibility from his shoulders to Mr Haradinajs.

But as the evidence they contain was not used in Mr Haradinaj's original war-crimes trial, it seems likely that prosecutors felt they were unable to stand up the claims. Moreover, Mr Haradinaj's name does not appear in Mr Martys report. The situation remains murky.

The EUs police and justice mission in Kosovo, EULEX, is to investigate Mr Martys claims, which go far beyond those of organ trafficking. But the new documents are unlikely to help in the search for justice. One well-placed source says that the hunt is already on in Kosovoto identify the witnesses.

After the leaks, anyone with knowledge of these events is unlikely to testify unless theyreceive guarantees of protection for years to come, including new identities and relocation abroad. That is a tragedy.

Everyone needs to know, once and for all, where the truth lies in this story, not least the families of the disappeared, as well as Kosovars whose leaders are now increasingly isolated internationallyin part thanks to these allegations.