02 Sep 14

Serbian authorities say they have located Yusuf Sonmez - who the EU rule of law of mission in Kosovo, EULEX, has accused of people trafficking and organised crime - in Amsterdam.
Marija Ristic
BIRN
Belgrade
Yusuf Sonmez. Photo by BETA

Serbia's office for war crimes prosecution said Sonmez, orginally from Turkey, had been located in The Netherlands, in Amsterdam, last week.

“This information was passed to the EU chief prosecutor, Jonathan Rathel,” the Serbian prosecution office said.

Sonmez and an Israeli national, Moshe Harel, are accused of people trafficking and organised crime by EULEX and are listed as fugitives wanted by Interpol.

They have been on the run since the indictment in the case was issued in June 2011.

EULEX says Sonmez was a key figure involved in trafficking in human organs in the Medicus clinic in Pristina. He was arrested in Istanbul in January 2011 but released on bail.

EULEX prosecutor Allen Cansick last year said EULEX believed that Harel was in Israel, while “the mission has information that Sonmez is travelling around the world”.

Last April, a Kosovo court convicted the owner of the Medicus clinic and four others of participating in an illegal organ-trading ring that harvested and sold human kidneys.

The verdict said that around 30 illegal kidney transplants took place at the clinic in 2008.

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

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

Sonmez and Harel, both suspected of collaborating with the convicted men, had already absconded and have not been seen in Kosovo since.

The Serbian prosecution claims Sonmez was also part of a group that Serbia says harvested organs of Serbs abducted during the Kosovo conflict in the so-called “Yellow house” in Albania in 1999.

The Medicus clinic was also mentioned in a 2011 Council of Europe report, which alleged that former fighters in the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, some now high-ranking politicians, traded in the organs of prisoners during the 1999 conflict.

An EU task force set up to investigate the Council of Europe report allegations in July said that its findings were consistent with what was said in 2011.

“There are compiling indications that this practice did occur on a very limited scale and that a small number of individuals were killed for the purpose of extracting and trafficking their organs,” the chief prosecutor of the EU task force, Clint Williamson, said.

It has yet to be seen whether anyone will be indicted on these charges before a special new court dealing with war crimes in Kosovo is established in 2015 in The Netherlands.