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Lutfi Dervishi at Pristina Basic Court on Wednesday. Photo: BIRN.

The former owner of the Medicus clinic, Lutfi Dervishi, who is being retried for alleged involvement in organised crime in connection with people-trafficking, told Pristina Basic Court on Wednesday that he once assisted in a kidney transplant at the clinic.

“As far as I know a transplant happened in 2008, I can’t say the exact date when it took place as it is a long time ago, but I think it was during October, I’m not sure, there are documents,” Dervishi said.

He insisted that the operation was the first and last one that took place at his clinic, and said it was carried out by Turkish doctor Yusuf Sonmez, who is also a suspect in the Medicus case but remains at large.

“To be honest I was not informed about the kidney transplant because I did not participate in that, but later I was called for help,” Dervishi said, adding that “a nurse was sent to call me to help with closing the patient’s wound”.

Police initially raided the Medicus clinic in 2008 after a Turkish man whose kidney had been removed was found seriously ill at Pristina airport.

Donors from Turkey, Russia, Moldova and Kazakhstan were allegedly brought to the clinic after being assured that they would receive up to 15,000 euros for their kidneys.

The prosecutor in the case said then that transplant recipients, mainly Israelis, paid more than 70,000 euros for the kidneys.

Dervishi, who is on trial along with his son Arban Dervishi and the clinic’s head anaesthetist Sokol Hajdini, told the court that Medicus had a licence for transplant surgeries.

He also said that Sonmez had a licence from Kosovo’s Ministry of Health to do transplants.

In July 2017, Pristina Basic Court started the retrial of Lutfi Dervishi, his son Arban and Hajdini, four years after they were originally convicted.

Kosovo’s appeals court had initially confirmed their convictions in March 2016, jailing Lutfi Dervishi and his son for eight years and Hajdini for five.

The verdict said found that “multiple illegal kidney transplants” took place at the clinic in 2008.

But a Supreme Court ruling overturned the original verdict on the basis of procedural irregularities.

Investigators closed down the Medicus clinic in 2008, and it has since been sold.

Another suspect in the case, Moshe Harel, an Israeli citizen accused of being involved in organ-trafficking the Medicus clinic in 2008, was arrested in Cyprus in January this year after years of being listed as wanted by Interpol.

The trial will continue on Thursday.