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3 May 2012

Albania To Allow International Probe Into Organ Trafficking

Albania has drafted legislation allowing an EU-led investigation into whether Kosovo Albanian rebels sold prisoners' organs during the 1998-99 Kosovo war.

Prime Minister Sali Bersiha said on May 2 that the draft, expected to be adopted by parliament this week, would allow international investigators to conduct the probe on Albanian territory.

Council of Europe rapporteur Dick Marty alleged in a 2010 report that senior commanders of the rebel ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK) were involved in organ trafficking during and after the conflict.

The report said organs were taken from the bodies of prisoners, many of them Serbs, who were held by the UCK in Albania in the late 1990s.

Kosovo and Albania have denied the accusations.

The European Union has set up a task force headed by U.S. prosecutor John Clint Williamson to conduct the investigation.