Thaci in the soup

Kosovo's prime minister, Hashim Thaci, was the head of a "mafia-like" organised crime ring in the late 1990s that was involved in organ trafficking, assassinations and other crimes, according to an investigation by the Council of Europe.

The Economist
THE storm raised by Dick Marty's Council of Europe  report [PDF] is not yet fading. Among other things, the report accuses Hashim Thaci, Kosovo's prime minister, of involvement in organ trafficking in the wake of the 1999 war. Mr Thaci says the allegations are slanderous and that he will sue Mr Marty. Unsurprisingly, the response to the report has been joyous in the Serbian media and defensive in Kosovo's.

The best analysis I have seen comes from a senior diplomat in Kosovo, who has agreed to share his views anonymously with readers of Eastern Approaches. The report, notes our source, is:

something of a C-grade plum pudding of true and very serious cases (already under investigation), past or rumoured cases that have yet to lead anywhere, possibly valid aspersions about the connections and business practices of the prime minister, bits of history of the Kosovo Liberation Army which Kosovars could think more deeply about, and some bland and faintly racist generalisations about Albanian society. The effect is a rich mixture, some of which cannot fail to stick, rather more than the sum of its parts.

All other things being equal Mr Thaci would ride out the report, says our source: "I'm not sure there's any sign of a smoking gun with Mr Thaci's fingerprints on it." The problem is the context and the timing. The report arrived just after Mr Thaci’s image “had taken a… battering among his people after the election results that they (perhaps unfairly) don't believe.” Kosovo's elections, on December 12th, were widely condemned as fraudulent, especially in certain areas. Mr Marty's report now sees the prime minister's reputation “nosedive among internationals, especially those who don't know Kosovo very well.”

Last Wednesday, Albanians and Bosnians were finally granted visa-free travel to Europe’s 25-country Schengen zone, meaning that, of the western Balkan states, only Kosovo remains outside the zone. So, writes our source:

“Imagine what's already in the mind of the EU home affairs ministers who have been pushing the commission not to allow visa liberalisation to the nasty Kosovars—and now imagine them reading the report. That might increase the pressure on Thaci to make some concessions to improve his image. But the response has been a patriotic circling of the wagons, culminating in a speech in which the prime minister... makes the nauseating assertion that the most sublime value ever created by the Albanians was the KLA.”

On Friday, notes our source, “we learn[ed] that Ramush Haradinaj's permission to join his heavily pregnant wife for Christmas has been overturned on prosecution appeal.” Mr Haradinaj is a former Kosovar prime minister and, like Mr Thaci, a KLA leader. He is currently being retried on charges of war crimes in The Hague following concerns that his original trial was marred by witness intimidation. The decision will be seen in Kosovo as “final confirmation of the global Serbophile international stitch-up, another treat for Belgrade while Kosovo gets nothing.”

Where will all this lead us? There is, says our source, a:

“wider sense among Kosovars, faint but growing, that the old paradigm of international engagement—play along with the reforms and the patience and the humility and we'll keep moving you towards full independence and the EU—is coming to a grinding halt. What exactly has ten years (as they see it) of patience and concession to international and EU qualms achieved? Even visa liberalisation seems years off. EU membership must be decades away. Why should the Kosovars—and in particular politicians working on cycles that stretch ahead at most for one election—bother with the Euro-reforms? Greater Albania might be a bit of a daydream (partly because among those who probably don't want it is, er, Albania), but maybe Kosovo would be better muddling through with a steady drip of recognitions and the bilateral support of real friends like Turkey and the US.”

The economist 

Kosovo's prime minister 'key player in mafia-like gang'

A draft report, released a day after Kosovo's election commission said Mr Thaci's party won the first post-independence election on Sunday, accused Western powers of complicity in ignoring the activities of the crime ring headed by Mr Thaci.

"Thaci and these other 'Drenica Group' members are consistently named as 'key players' in intelligence reports on Kosovo's mafia-like structures of organised crime," the report said.

"We found that the 'Drenica Group' had as its chief – or, to use the terminology of organised crime networks, its 'boss' – the renowned political operator ... Hashim Thaci."

The report states that Mr Thaci exerted "violent control" over the heroin trade. Dick Marty, the European Union investigator, will present the report to European diplomats from all member states in Paris on Thursday.

Kosovo's government on Tuesday described the report as "baseless" and "defamatory".

"The government of Kosovo and Prime Minister Hashim Thaci will undertake all the necessary steps and actions to dismiss the slanders of Dick Marty, including legal and political means," the government said in a statement.

Meanwhile, legal proceedings began in a Pristina district court on Tuesday over an alleged organ trafficking gang discovered by police. An EU prosecutor told the court a gang of Kosovan organ traffickers operated an elaborate international network that traded in the organs of people living in extreme poverty.

The men, including a former senior Kosovan Health Ministry official, promised poor people from Moldova, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkey up to €14,500 (£12,300) for their organs.

Those who received the organs – including patients from Canada, Germany, Poland and Israel – paid between €80,000 and €100,000 for them, Ratel said. The victims, however, were never paid, EU prosecutor Jonathan Ratel told the court.

The seven men have pleaded not guilty to charges ranging from trafficking in persons to unlawful practices of medicine and abuse of power. Two other suspects, a Turkish and an Israeli national, remain at large.

Telegraph