Prosecutors in contact over Sonmez (Tanjug)
PRISTINA - The Serbian Prosecutor's Office for War Crimes is in contact with Kosovo's Special Prosecution Office over Yusuf Sonmez, a Turkish doctor suspected of having conducted illegal human organ transplantations, Eulex has confirmed.
Eulex can confirm that the Serbian Prosecutor's Office for War Crimes is in contact with the Special Prosecution Office in connection with a Kosovo fugitive from justice who has been allegedly located in a European metropolis, Miguel Carvalho de Faria, the head of the Eulex Press and Public Information Office, told Tanjug late Wednesday.
The Prosecutor's Office for War Crimes has submitted to Eulex Chief Prosecutor Jonathan Ratel all available information on Sonmez after locating him in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, last week through protected witnesses.
Sonmez, who is sought by Interpol, is the first accused in the Medicus case, and has been tried in absentia in a Pristina court, the Prosecutor's Office for War Crimes said on Tuesday.
Sonmez was arrested in Istanbul in early January 2011, but was released following questioning on the grounds of having a registered residence.
The Medicus clinic, which was shut down in 2008, is mentioned in a Council of Europe report implicating members of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army in trade of organs taken from prisoners during the 1999 conflict in Kosovo-Metohija.
The findings of the Prosecutor's Office for War Crimes indicate that Sonmez took part in transplantations of the organs, harvested from kidnapped Serbs, Roma and disloyal ethnic Albanians in the so-called Yellow House in northern Albania.