Quest for justice taking too long

BRUSSELS - The families of the victims of crimes committed in Kosovo have been waiting for justice and the truth about the fates of their loved ones for too long, says Michael Montgomery, a US journalist who discovered the "Yellow House" in Albania, identified in a report by Council of Europe special rapporteur Dick Marty as the site of an organ harvesting operation whose victims were kidnapped Kosovo Serbs.

Clint Williamson is a serious prosecutor, and he has conducted a serious investigation, Montgomery told Tanjug, commenting on a report following a three-year investigation into Marty's allegations, unveiled by the EULEX special prosecutor in Brussels on Tuesday.

However, the results of the investigation revealed nothing essentially new, Montgomery said.

UNMIK has been aware of the organ harvesting accusations since as early as 2003 but never conducted a serious investigation into them, while EULEX had not dealt with the matter before the establishment of Williamson's team in 2011, the journalist said.

Information about secret camps in Albania where members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) held kidnapped civilians has been published in reports by many media and human rights organisations a long time ago, Montgomery added.

Reporting for Britain's Daily Telegraph with his colleague Steven Smith, Montgomery investigated war crimes committed in Kosovo-Metohija after the conflict there ended in 1999.

Montgomery was the first to draw the "Yellow House", located in Burrel, central Albania, to the attention of investigators from the United Nations and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

The families of the victims have been waiting for justice and the truth for too...