At the end of last year it was reported that in the late 1990s Hashim Thaci, the prime minister of Kosovo, together with other Kosovo Albanian political leaders, had traded in the organs of Serb prisoners held in neighbouring Albania. Some papers implied that organs had been harvested while the prisoners were still alive. The allegations were based on a report commissioned by the Council of Europe and written by Dick Marty, a Swiss senator. They are quite distinct from the charges brought against several people currently on trial in Kosovo, accused of swindling kidney donors of several different nationalities out of money promised to them for giving up their organs. The criminal groups responsible in that case are said to have connections with the political leadership, but it's unfortunate that Marty allows the two different sets of allegations to seem to lend support to each other.

LRB 3 February 2011 | PDF Download