One of the most explosive allegations about people who went missing in Kosovo was that organs were surgically removed from some of the victims while they were held in captivity at secret Kosovo Liberation Army detention sites in neighbouring Albania to be sold for transplants.

These claims were made public in a report in 2010 by Council of Europe rapporteur Dick Marty, who probed allegations of crimes committed by KLA guerrillas.

Marty’s report said that “numerous concrete and convergent indications confirm that some Serbians and some Albanian Kosovars were held prisoner in secret places of detention under KLA control in northern Albania and were subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment, before ultimately disappearing”.

It also alleged that “organs were removed from some prisoners at a clinic on Albanian territory, near [the town of] Fushë-Krujë, to be taken abroad for transplantation”.

UNMIK became aware in 2003 of at least seven people who ended up dead in Albania, but declined to give more information to BIRN about how it followed up the allegation.

“UNMIK cannot comment further on ongoing criminal investigations or disclose confidential information,” it said.

The claims in Marty’s report were followed up by a European Union special investigative task force. The EU task force’s subsequent report, alleging serious crimes were committed by KLA members, led to the establishment of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, the so-called ‘special court’ in The Hague, which aims to put the suspects on trial, although no indictments have been announced so far.

One of the missing persons whose name has been linked to the organ-trafficking allegations is Zlatko Antic.

Antic was 35 years old on July 28, 1999, when he left the village of Brezovica and visited his family’s apartment in the town of Prizren to check on the situation there and find out whether it would be safe to return.

He went to his neighbour, to whom he had given the keys to his apartment. The neighbour said later that a few minutes after he entered the flat, six men in KLA uniforms went in and forced Antic and another neighbour to leave with them.

Antic’s mother, who filed a complaint to Human Rights Advisory Panel, stated that at that time, the KLA was occupying an apartment on the ground floor of the apartment building.

She added that Antic and the abducted neighbour were taken to a student centre located behind Prizren’s town cemetery. The neighbour was later released, but the KLA held on to Antic. Since then, his whereabouts have been unknown.

Four years later, in 2003, Antic’s name showed up in a classified report by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia about what at that time was the little-known issue of human organ-trafficking. The report said that eight ethnic Albanians, some of them KLA members, claimed that they either knew about or participated in transporting captives from Kosovo to detention in northern and central Albania.

Although UNMIK did some investigation into the abduction of Antic and took statements, HRAP said that promising leads were not followed up.

“Unlike in other disappearances cases, there was an eyewitness to Mr Zlatko Antic’s abduction, and that, under these circumstances, an effective investigation should have also proceeded with analysing and resolving the discrepancies… as well as canvassing the area, including the location where the KLA had established its office [in Prizren],” HRAP said.

“Instead of proactively pursuing such leads, in January 2004, UNMIK police made the assessment that no evidence was available and decided to leave the case pending,” it added.

But the Antic case was not only special because of the eyewitness, but also because of the possible link to organ-trafficking, and HRAP expressed concern that this aspect was not probed by UNMIK.

“The [Human Rights Advisory] Panel also notes with concern that, based on the document mentioned above, at the latest by October 2003, the UNMIK DoJ [Department of Justice] had received information from eyewitnesses, all former KLA members, that Mr Zlatko Antic was probably among those captives who had been taken to illegal detention centres in Albania, reportedly for the purpose of having their organs harvested,” HRAP said.

“However, there is no indication in the file that this important piece of information was provided to those investigating the case of Mr Zlatko Antic or that any action was taken by UNMIK to further investigate these most serious allegations apart from transmitting the information to the ICTY in 2003,” it added.

In a damning verdict on UNMIK’s failed attempts to investigate, HRAP said it was “extremely concerned that so little effort was made to investigate and give effect to the right to truth with respect to these shocking allegations”.

‘All perpetrators should face justice’