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Russia seeks Medicus transplantation case to be tried to very end

The Medicus criminal case has been dragged out since January 2008, Lavrov said

MOSCOW, January 18 (Itar-Tass) —— Russia will seek the Medicus criminal case over the black organ transplantation cases in Kosovo “to be tried to the very end,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday.

After the resignation the former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia Carla del Ponte began to act in a more freely manner and wrote for the first time about the black transplantation cases in Kosovo in her book of memoires, Lavrov noted. She dwelt on the abductions of people in Kosovo in 1999-2000, their transfer to Albania and the forced removal of their internal organs for sale.

A PACE member Dick Marty from Switzerland was actively investigating the case of black transplant surgeons, the Russian minister said. Marty has drafted a report devoted to this problem on the recommendations from the PACE Committee of Legal Affairs and Human Rights. The problem is being actively debated at various UN floors.

The Medicus criminal case has been dragged out since January 2008, Lavrov said. The then Kosovo health minister Alus Gasi dismissed a subordinate on suspicions of illegal human organ sale. The human organs were found at the Medicus clinic in Pristina. Moscow and Belgrade believe that the investigation will find new information on the black transplantation case, in which, according to Serbian and some independent sources, former and incumbent Kosovo top officials are engaged.

Speaking on the activities of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Lavrov accused this structure in a political biased position, recalling that Moscow “calls for the shutdown” of the tribunal for a long time. All tasks, which the United Nations Organization shouldered on the Tribunal, “were fulfilled by the Tribunal long ago, but far from perfectly.” The prosecutors and judges of the Tribunal use double standards in the criminal cases, in which Bosnian Serbs and Muslims are the defendants, Lavrov said. In this respect, he recalled about the fate of the former Yugoslavian leader Slobodan Milosevic, who died in the prison cell in The Hague.

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