UN Pressures Albania to Allow Independent Inquiry Into Organ Harvesting

By Kenneth F. Hunt
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

TIRANA, Albania – A United Nations special expert has accused Albania of stalling an investigation into illicit organ harvesting of ethnic Serbs. The allegations of exploitation of Serbs stem from events in Kosovo during the 1998-1999 Kosovo War. As such, the UN and other international bodies are pressuring the country to comply with a full investigation.

UN Special Rapporetuer, Philip Alston, after a personal seven day trip to Tirana, has accused the government of stifling an investigation into the abduction, killing, and organ harvesting of some 300 ethnic Serbs during the War.

Mr. Alston said that Albanian officials believe that outside investigation of these allegations are “politically motivated and absolutely without any foundation.” As a result independent inquiries have not resulted in “meaningful co-operation [by] the government of Albania.”

Serbia initially launched an investigation in March 2008 after Carla del Ponte, the former UN War Crimes Chief Prosecutor, published a book called The Hunt.

In the book Ms. del Ponte alleged that hundreds of Serbs were kidnapped, taken to the notorious “yellow house” in the town of Burrel in northern Albania, where the victims had their organs extracted by Kosovo Albanian militants. The organs were then sold to foreign traffickers and clinics.

In writing the book, del Ponte was summarizinga search of the “yellow house” by UN investigators, which turned up  “pieces of gauze, a used syringe and two plastic IV bags encrusted with mud and empty bottles of medicine, some of which was of a muscle relaxant often used in surgical operations.”

Despite new pressures from the UN, Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha has summarily dismissed the allegations as “fictitious”. Mr. Berisha also insists that the matter has already been properly investigated by Albania after Serbia and the European Union launched investigations in 2008.

If Albania continues to refuse to cooperate, Mr. Alston said the United Nations will take further action. In the mean time, the Council of Europe, EULEX, and Serbia’s war crimes prosecutor are all currently investigating the allegations.

For more information, please see:

BBC – UN says Albania ‘stalling’ Serb human organs inquiry – 23 February 2010

NEW YORK TIMES – U.N. Sleuth Calls on Albania to Allow Organ Inquiry – 23 February 2010

RADIO SRBIJA – UN: Tirana should be open to independent investigation – 23 February 2010

Afghan Tribal Leader Killed By Blast

By Michael E. Sanchez
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

KABUL, Aghanistan– A suicide bomber has killed an influential Afghan tribal chief in eastern Nangarhar province, officials say.  In addition 14 other people were killed.

During the Afghan civil war in the 1990s, Mohammad Haji Zaman was a powerful mujahideen warlord.  He led tribal forces in the Tora Bora region during the 2001 US-led Afghan invasion but is suspected of allowing al-Qaeda head Osama bin Laden to flee.  No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.  Mohammad Haji Zaman, also known as Haji Zaman Gamsurek, was addressing a gathering of refugees in the Khogyani district of Nangarhar when the blast went off.

Police official Col Abdul Ghafour told the AFP news agency the suicide bomber set off his explosives after approaching a group of tribal elders at the gathering.  The attack in the eastern province of Nangargar occurred when provincial authorities were distributing land titles to poor people in the Dashte Chimtala area.  General Ayoub Salangi, the provincial police chief, said  “The attack killed 15 people and around 15 others were injured.”

Mohammad Haji Zaman has been living in the north-western Pakistani city of Peshawar, only recently returning to Afghanistan.

The wounded in Monday’s attack included Abdul Rahman Shams, the chief of the refugee department in the province.  It was not known who was the prime target of the attack.  Taliban spokesman were not immediately available for comment.  Also in the eastern region, NATO said Monday that their forces killed four insurgents and injured five others after the militants attacked their joint patrol with Afghan forces in Taqab district of north-eastern province of Kapisa.

There were no casualties among the combined forces on Monday;s firefight, the alliance said in a statement.

Chris Morris of the BBC says that Nangarhar is a province that, under the guidance of local tribal leaders, had become more peaceful in recent months.  But it is on the border with Pakistan, an important target for militants wishing to smuggle arms.

For more information, please see:

BBC News- Suicide Blast Kills Afghan Tribal Chief in Nangarhar– 22 February 2010

M&C News- Suicide Attack Kills 15 Afghans including Tribal Leader-22 February 2010

ABC News- Tribal Elders Killed In Suicide Blast-23 February 2010


Children Killed in Yemen War

By Brandon Kaufman
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

SANAA, Yemen – According to a report issued by UNICEF and the Yemen children’s rights organization SEYAJ, 187 children have been killed in the war in Northern Yemen since August.

Monday’s report placed the blame for the children’s deaths on government-backed militias fighting the Shia Huthis in northern Yemen.  The report also suggested that the Yemeni Shiite rebels and the pro-government militia were using child soldiers in the conflict.

According to the report, of the 187 who have died, seventy-one percent have been killed in the fighting while the remaining casualties resulted from lack of food or medical services.

The most recent conflict in what has been an ongoing six-year battle began on August 11 when the rebel Huthis and government forces began fighting.  At the time, government forces launched an all-out offensive aimed at crushing the uprising.  On November 4, Saudi Arabia joined the fighting after rebel forces were accused of killing a border guard and said to have been occupying two villages inside Saudi territory.

The UNICEF report also noted that there was child soldiers on both sides of the conflict.  Estimates suggest that there were approximately 400 child soldiers fighting alongside the Huthis, while the pro-government militia had just fewer than 300 children fighting on their side.

In addition to the children that have died, the report also stated that over 70,000 children have been displaced in the northern cities of Sadaa and Amran.  Furthermore, it is believed that over ninety percent of children in the conflict zone were unable to receive basic education services due to the fighting. Of the 701 schools in Saada Governorate, seventeen were destroyed in the fighting and another sixteen had been taken over by one or other of the warring parties. Most of the remaining schools are now deserted.

Despite a ceasefire that was reached on February 11, reports of sporadic clashes have been commonplace.

For more information, please see:

Reuters- YEMEN: Children Hit Hardest by Northern Conflict– 23 February 2010

Gulf News- 187 Children Killed in Yemen’s War with Rebels– 22 February 2010

News 24- 187 Children Killed in Yemen– 22 February 2010

String of Attacks in Iraq Kill Over Twenty

By Bobby Rajabi

Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

BAGHDAD, Iraq – A string of attacks throughout Iraq on February 22 left over twenty people dead, including nine children. The attacks came in a series of bombings, shootings and beheadings. The attacks include rockets exploding in the Green Zone (Baghdad’s heavily fortified neighborhood), car bombings near government buildings, and killings of security officers and government. Iraqi officials have reportedly been able to detect a discernible pattern to the violence.

Among the attacks were the killings of two families in their homes in Baghdad.  With respect to one of the families, gunmen killed entire family, who were reportedly Shi’ite Muslims living in an area outside of the Baghdad that is majority Sunni. Neighbors found the six children and their parents dead in their home in the rural town of Wehda, a town that witnessed some of the first sectarian violence in 2005.

A Baghdad security spokesman confirmed the incident in a statement, saying “unknown gunmen killed eight members of the same family with silencers, and then cut the heads off some of the bodies. The spokesman confirmed that four arrests had been made in connection with the killings. The beheading of civilians has traditionally been associated with Sunni extremists linked to al-Qaeda.

Another attack came where a suicide bomber attacked a government building in Ramadi, the capital of the Anbar province. The attack killed five people. Anbar was previously an insurgent stronghold. The bombing was the latest in a string that have raised fears that Al Qaeda is attempting to regain control of the area.

Among the other attacks on February 22 was a car bombing that exploded outside the Internal Affairs Ministry in Baghad. The bombing killed two Iraqi policemen and three civilians. Another attack came when a sniper shot a policeman who was manning a checkpoint. A street cleaner, university professor, businessman, four policemen and two soldiers were also shot and killed in separate attacks in Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk.

There was no immediate suggestion by Iraqi officials that the attacks are related the coming national election. However, the level of violence in the country has escalated as election day nears.

For more information, please see:

Los Angeles Times – 26 People Killed in Brutal Attacks Across Iraq – 23 February 2010

AFP – Eight Family Members Brutally Killed in Iraq – 22 February 2010

BBC – Iraq Gunmen ‘Behead Shia Family in’ Baghdad – 22 February 2010

New York Times – Spike in Iraq Violence as Vote Nears – 22 February 2010

Data Reveals that Rendition Planes Landed in Poland

By Elizabeth A. Conger
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

WARSAW, Poland – Polish flight authorities have admitted their involvement in the CIA’s secret program for the rendition of high-level terrorist suspects from Iraq and Afghanistan. After six years of denying denying their involvement, Warsaw’s air control service confirmed that at least six CIA rendition flights landed in Szymany airfield in northern Poland. 

Two human rights groups, the Open Society Justice Initiative, based in New York, and the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, based in Warsaw, received the flight logs from the Polish Air Navigation Services Agency in September, and released reports regarding Polish involvement in the rendition program on Monday after analyzing the data for the past several months.

Darian Pavli, a lawyer with the Open Society Justice Initiative, said: “The thing that is quite shocking is that the European investigations requested these specific flight records some four years ago…The Poles all these years said that they could not locate them, the flights didn’t exist.”

For years human rights investigators have asserted that Poland was the location of one of the “black sites,” part of of the network of the CIA’s overseas prisons where suspected Al-Qaeda operatives were detained and subjected to brutal interrogation techniques. Polish authorities repeatedly denied the allegations, and refused to cooperate with international investigations.

An extensive Council of Europe investigation in 2007 found that a prison facility located near the Szymany airfield was rented by the CIA from the Poles and used to detain “especially sensitive high-value detainees.” The Council’s report accused fourteen European governments of permitting the CIA to run detention centers or carry out rendition flights between 2002 and 2005.  According to former American intelligence officials, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, chief plotter of the 9/11 attack, was interrogated at the  secret base near the Syzmany airport after his capture in 2003. 

CIA spokesman, Paul Gimigliano, said: “The agency does not discuss publicly where facilities related to its past detention program may, or may not, have been located.”

The Polish Air Navigation Services released flight data showing that at least two of the planes linked to CIA rendition flights, a Boeing 737 and a Gulfstream V, flew from Kabul and Rabat, in Morocco, to Syzmany at least six times between February and September 2003. Kabul and Rabat are the locations of the detention of at least two of the rendition detainees. Flight logs also revealed an attempted cover up by the CIA and Polish authorities, with aviation authorities being told that several of the flights were destined for Warsaw, rather then Syzmany, and names of pilots having been changed.

The Polish government declined to comment on the contents of the reports issued by the two rights groups, but Foreign Ministry spokesman, Piotr Paszkowski, said that the prosecutor’s office was currently investigating the allegations.

Adam Bodnar, head of the legal division at Warsaw’s Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, said: “These flight records reinforce the troubling findings of official European inquiries and global human rights groups, showing complicity with CIA abuse across Europe.”

He added: “Of course Polish authorities may help the CIA in the fight against terrorism, but they are bound by the Polish Constitution, which prohibits torture.” 

For more information, please see:

The Guardian – Poland admits role in CIA rendition programme – 22 February 2010

The New York Times – Data Shows Rendition Planes Landed in Poland – 22 February 2010

The Wall Street Journal – Poland Delivers Official Confirmation of CIA Flights – 22 February 2010

Washington Post – Details posted on alleged CIA-flights to Poland – 22 February 2010