Council of Europe to probe claims of killing for transplants

29 May, 2008 12:34 / Updated 16 years ago

A special inquiry is to be held into claims by Karla Del Ponte, a former prosecutor at the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, that hundreds of Serbs were butchered by Albanians for their organs during the armed conflict in Kosovo in the la

The decision was made by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe  (PACE) on the initiative of Russia's State Duma delegation. Del Ponte mentioned the mass killings in her memoirs. She wrote that hundreds of Serbs were systematically abducted by the terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army. She says they were transported to camps in northern Albania, and then killed so their organs could be sold for medical purposes. Del Ponte claimed the tribunal had been aware of it, but no investigation was launched. The PACE commission is to deliver its report within two years.