Europe's top human rights watchdog launched a probe Monday into Serb allegations that ethnic Albanian guerrillas kidnapped Serb civilians during Kosovo's war, then removed their organs and sold the body parts on the black market. Leading the probe is Dick Marty, a Swiss senator representing the Council of Europe. Serbian officials say up to 500 Kosovo Serbs vanished without a trace during the 1998-99 war. They claim at least some of them may have had organs removed. The allegations were first made public in a memoir last year by Carla Del Ponte, the former chief U.N. war crimes prosecutor. In "Madame Prosecutor," an account of her tenure as head of the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, Del Ponte said her office was tipped to possible organ trafficking. After his fact-finding visits, Marty will issue a report on "inhuman treatment of people and illicit trafficking in human organs in Kosovo," the statement said.
ImageRussian Ambassador in Belgrade Alexander Konuzin said Russia will be defending the stands of Serbia before the International Court of Justice when the public debate on the issue of legality of the unilaterally proclaimed independence of Kosovo begins. We will defend the stands of Serbia in that debate, as they are in accordance with the international law, he said. The debate starts on December 1 and all the UN member-states will be entitled to take part in it, to make announcements, representations and comments.
Moscow has told of atrocities committed by Georgian forces during the South Ossetia invasion last year. In a letter sent Monday to the Nation from the country’s Embassy in Nairobi, Russia claims South Ossetia civilians were subjected to atrocities such as crushing of people under caterpillar tracks, burning them alive and shooting by Georgian servicemen of civilians who were hiding from the shelling. “The scale and gravity of such atrocities testify that the operation Cleared Field was aimed not at the “restoration of the constitutional order, as the Georgian authorities lied, and not even at a forced annexation of South Ossetia to Georgia.” It also claims that the straightforward elimination of a significant number of Ossetians, with a blatant brutality clearly aimed at forcing the rest to flee from their native land. In the letter, Russia also took issue with the international community, especially Western countries for not condemning Georgia over the attack. The letter said: “The refusal of Western politicians to recognise Georgian acts as genocide is perceived by South Ossetians as a demonstration of hypocrisy, especially detestable after all the earlier anti-Serbian paroxysms.”
Violations of Greek national airspace and overflights of Greek islands by Turkish military planes are pointless provocations that contravene international law and will not change the status quo in the Aegean, Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis sternly warned, as quoted in an interview by the Turkish mass daily "Hurriyet". "Overflights by Turkish fighter planes 300 metres above Greek isles in the Aegean, such as Agathonissi, will neither change the status quo in the Aegean nor prove that Turkish claims in the Aegean are valid," Bakoyannis said, adding that they are just simply unnecessary provocations towards Greece. Bakoyannis also referred to the closed Halki seminary and the Ecumenical Patriarchate, as well as the Ankara Protocol. Regarding an invitation by her Turkish counterpart, Ahmet Davutoglu, to visit Ankara, the Greek foreign minister thanked Davutoglu again for the invitation, noting that the appropriate time for such visit was being examined, while she stressed that the two countries must not discontinue talks, even on the issues on which they cannot agree.
NATO's new secretary general said Monday that he will visit Greece and Turkey as soon as possible in a push to thaw the conflict over Cyprus and improve NATO cooperation with the European Union. "It is a priority for me to get rid of these obstacles... It is an issue which will discuss with Turkish and Greek leaders when I pay early introductory visits later this month," Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on his first working day in office. NATO-EU collaboration is stalled because Turkey, a NATO member, Greece, a member of the EU and NATO, and Cyprus, an EU member, refuse to allow the organizations to share security information.
France-based Lawyers of the World, an international legal aid network, said it will defend 24 Somali piracy suspects held in Kenya, to boost the chances of a fair trial. The hearing for the first group of 11 Somali men accused of piracy starts today in the port city of Mombasa, lawyer Avi Singh, a dual U.S.-Indian citizen coordinating the pro-bono defense effort, said in an interview yesterday in Mombasa. All 24 men claim they are not guilty and face up to life imprisonment if convicted. Kenya, which borders Somalia, became a venue for piracy trials after signing prisoner-transfer deals this year with the U.S., the U.K. and the European Union in exchange for legal and logistical support. Those same countries are demanding that Kenya improve its own legal system. The trials can’t be held in Somalia because the country doesn’t have a functioning judicial system after 18 years of civil war. As a result, foreign navies have dropped off more than 110 suspected Somali pirates since 2006 at Kenya’s Mombasa port.
Paramilitary troops patrolled the streets of a town in eastern Pakistan yesterday after Muslim radicals burnt to death eight members of a Christian family, raising fears of violence spreading to other areas. Hundreds of armed supporters of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an outlawed Islamic militant group, set alight dozens of Christian homes in Gojra town at the weekend after allegations that a copy of the Koran had been defiled. The mob opened fire indiscriminately, threw petrol bombs and looted houses as thousands of frightened Christians ran for safety. “They were shouting anti-Christian slogans and attacked our houses,” Rafiq Masih, a resident of the predominantly Christian colony, said. Residents said that police stood aside while the mob went on the rampage. “We kept begging for protection, but police did not take action,” Mr Masih said. Police and local officials said that at least eight people, including four women and a child, were killed in the fires. Two others died of gunshot wounds. Residents said that the casualties were much higher; one claimed that the number of dead could be in the dozens as many bodies were still buried under the rubble.Shahbaz Bhatti, the Minister for Minorities, said that 40 Christian homes were torched in rioting. He said there was no truth to allegations that a Koran had been defiled, and accused the police of ignoring his appeal to provide protection to Christians.