UNMIK hid all the evidence!
Vecernje Novosti - July 8, 2008 20:23:59

by E. Radosavljevic

The investigation into the trade of human organs in the north of Albania, of which the public learned from Carla del Ponte's book, was condemned to failure while it was headed by UNMIK. This was also confirmed by the newest evidence acquired by "Novosti", which awake serious suspicions that officials of this organization were also involved in everything. First of all, its former high official Jose Pablo Baraybar, who was the head of the Office of Missing Persons and Forensic Medicine.

Namely, quite a few things suggest that Baraybar was acquainted with what was going on in Albania but that he stopped an investigation, it was confirmed for our paper. According to unofficial information, he is now in hiding in Argentina.

Our paper's collocutor, a former member of UNMIK who took part in this investigation, and who for understandable reasons does not want his name to be publicly known, reveals details acquired by the UN organization in Kosovo.

INVESTIGATION

"Former chief prosecutor of the Hague Tribunal Carla del Ponte in 2003 asked UNMIK to launch an investigation into the organ trade," says our collocutor. "Within UNMIK there were at that time six, seven units involved in investigating various kinds of crimes, and the Tribunal had more than 50 of its own investigators in Kosovo, so there were people to conduct an investigation.

The problem, our collocutor says, appeared at the very beginning. Namely, since the Hague Tribunal had no jurisdiction on the territory of Albania but only on the territory of the former Yugoslavia, it could not directly conduct an investigation in that country. That is why a request to conduct an investigation was sent to the central investigative unit of UNMIK whose members, together with the Hague investigators and the Albanian prosecutor, visited the "yellow house" in the north of Albania where, according to some sources, organs were removed from people abducted in Kosovo and Metohija and transported from the airport in Tirana to Europe. There they found gloves, surgical instruments, bags, infusion bags, traces of blood - all of which more than clearly suggested that something very serious took place in the house.

"It is completely unbelievable why the investigators, after finding all these things, failed to take any fingerprints," emphasizes our collocutor. "On the basis of [the prints] everyone who was in that house could have been identified!"

YELLOW HOUSE

When asked how the Tribunal originally found out about the possibility of trade in human organs, the UNMIK member says that the source was four Albanians who were involved in the whole operation. Moreover, they also took the team of Hague and UNMIK investigators to the "yellow house".

"They even showed them places where remains of human bodies that could not be used for trade were buried," says our collocutor. "But those graves were never exhumed! This clearly shows that someone very powerful had a strong interest in no one ever finding out about these crimes."

The identity of these persons has not yet been established by the investigation. Nevertheless, today all eyes are turned to Jose Pablo Baraybar, then head of the Office of Forensic Medicine and Missing Persons. He, it is true, was not in Albania with the investigators but because of the position he held and after learning that locations where remains of bodies were buried was known, should have ordered them to be dug up and exhumed.

"Baraybar did none of these things. The Hague and UNMIK investigators, upon returning from Albania, even claimed they could not determine whether the blood they found was human or perhaps animal. That is simply impossible because there are sprays with the help of which it is possible to determine immediately on the scene whether blood is human."

REPORT

The investigation of the trade in human organs ended when the investigators returned to Kosovo. Despite all the material evidence that was found, not one step further was made, not even determining whether the blood found in the house and on the evidence was animal or human. But the investigators wrote a forensic report on their visit to Albania, despite the fact that the team that went did not include a single forensics expert.

No one learned what had been found in Albania. Despite the fact that at that time both Serbian and Albanian civilians in Kosovo were seeking their missing, UNMIK never informed anyone of what it found in the "yellow house".

The report that was written by Hague and UNMIK investigators was marked "confidential". It was never forwarded to anyone, and according to results of the present investigation, it vanished completely.

On the basis of all available information, it can be said with relative certainty that the human organ trade operation in Kosovo was very well organized, and it is unlikely that it could have occurred without the knowledge and participation of UNMIK.

"There is no way that UNMIK did not know about it. Their checkpoints were everywhere, and the prisoners who were transported by truck also had to pass their control, as did all the equipment necessary for these operations. We assume that the Albanians provided the export of the organs but the other thing we are also wondering is - who provided the surgeons?"

FIRST CHARGES

The first criminal charges against Baraybar were filed by Kosovo Albanians, members of the Nada [Hope] Organization from Suva Reka. Namely, the male members of the families carefully inspected the bags containing the remnants of the bodies returned to them by UNMIK. They soon began to complain that the bags were too light and that body parts were missing.

WELL KNOWN

Jose Pablo Baraybar passed through many war zones as a forensics expert. In addition to Kosovo, he was also in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Croatia, and while there had already gotten a reputation as someone suspicious, says our collocutor.

"During the course of autopsies, he is known to have taken bones of the deceased without any knowledge by his family, to have taken them out and sold them to faculties as exponents," says our collocutor. "In the year 2000 [woman] pathologist Tarija Fomisto [sp?] wrote a letter to the UNMIK chief informing him that Baraybar was taking bones. After Kosovo, he went to Dallas to the U.S. forensic academy, where he brought a whole chest containing about 800 bones. The chest was labeled 'Baraybar Skeleton Collection'. Dr. Tal Simons [sp?], who was in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, protested as a result of this, claiming she was aware of Baraybar's catastrophic reputation.

TRIBUNAL'S HELP

Chief investigator of the prosecutor's office of the Hague Tribunal Patrick Lopez Perez [sp?] met on Tuesday in Belgrade with Justice Minister Snezana Malovic and war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic.

Perez promised our officials full assistance in the investigation on the trade of human organs.

Serbian Original: http://www.novosti.rs/code/navigate.php?Id=3&status=jedna&vest=124300&search=unmik&datum=2008-07-10
Translation By: Snezana Ivanisevic