Kosovo authorities prepare files to create Special Court

PRISTINA - Kosovo's Prime Minister Isa Mustafa said on Monday that the authorities in Pristina were working of documents needed to create the Special Court.

This court will work on crimes committed by the ethnic Albanian former paramilitary organisation called the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and claims made in a report by Council of Europe rapporteur Dick Marty concerning killings and organ trafficking that involved Serbs kidnapped during the conflict in Kosovo.

"A team of expoerts from Kosovo institutions is working with the EU to harmonise the legislation related to the Special Court, the court's statute and amendments to the Constitution that are required for the laws and statute to be adopted," Mustafa told the portal Gazetaekspres.

He expects the Kosovo parliament to discuss and adopt these documents in March and April.

Kosovo agreed to form a special court when the parliament ratified the documents signed by Kosovo President Atifeta Jahjaga and former EU high representative Catherine Ashton, he noted.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) Chief Prosecutor's Office acquired information saying that Kosovo Albanians transported around 300 kidnapped Serbs and a smaller number of Roma and "disloyal" Albanians from Kosovo to northern Albania in summer of 1999, where the victims' organs were harvested for illegal trade, according to claims made by former chief prosecutor of the ICTY Carla Del Ponte in her book The Hunt: Me and the War Criminal from 2008.

Dick Marty, chief rapporteur of the EU's special investigative team for crimes committed by the KLA, said in his 2010 report there was strong evidence of organ trafficking involving a little fewer than 10 persons kidnapped in...