Organ Theft
Organ theft in Kosovo (sometimes also known as the "yellow house" case) refers to alleged organ harvesting and killing of an indeterminate number of "disappeared" people. Various sources estimate that the number of victims ranges from a "handful", up to 50, and between 24 to 100. The victims are believed to be mostly ethnic Serbian men from Kosovo, allegedly killed by perpetrators with strong links to elements of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in 1999. By 2011, about 1,900 "disappeared" people (about two-thirds of them ethnic Albanians) still remained missing from the Kosovo conflict.
In 2010, a report by Swiss prosecutor Dick Marty to the Council of Europe (CoE) uncovered "credible, convergent indications" of an illegal trade in human organs going back over a decade, including the deaths of a "handful" of Serb captives allegedly killed for this purpose. On 25 January 2011, the report was endorsed by the CoE, which called for a full and serious investigation. Since the issuance of the report, however, senior sources in the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX) and many members of the European Parliament have expressed serious doubts regarding the report and its foundations, believing Marty failed to provide "any evidence" concerning the allegations. A EULEX special investigation was launched in August 2011.
Read more about this topic: Crime In Kosovo
Famous quotes containing the words organ and/or theft:
“What we commonly call man, the eating, drinking, planting, counting man, does not, as we know him, represent himself, but misrepresents himself. Him we do not respect, but the soul, whose organ he is, would he let it appear through his action, would make our knees bend.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Men are not therefore put to death, or punished for that their theft proceedeth from election; but because it was noxious and contrary to men’s preservation, and the punishment conducing to the preservation of the rest, inasmuch as to punish those that do voluntary hurt, and none else, frameth and maketh men’s wills such as men would have them.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)