The owner of Kosovo’s Medicus clinic and his head anaesthetist were convicted of human trafficking and organised crime after a court found they carried out illegal transplant operations to sell kidneys to patients.

Pristina Basic Court on Thursday found Medicus owner Lutfi Dervishi and the clinic’s head anaesthetist Sokol Hajdini guilty of human trafficking and organised crime.

Dervishi was sentenced to seven years and six months in prison and fined 8,000 euros, while Hajdini was jailed for a year.

The Basic Court in Pristina has announced today its decision in the so-called ‘Medicus’ case and found the owner of the clinic Lutfi Dervishi guilty on charges of human trafficking and organised crime. Dervishi was previously convicted on the same charges for his role in the illegal organ transplants that took place in his clinic but the case went to retrial. The court said the prosecution managed to prove that Dervishi was aware of the illegal practices in his clinic and was personally involved in them.

By: Dean B. Pineles

Six years of efforts to deliver justice were wasted when the defendants convicted in the Medicus organ-trafficking case were inexplicably sent for retrial, says a judge who served on the original trial panel.

On April 17, the European Commission released its lengthy and detailed report on Kosovo for 2018. As a former international judge with the European Union Rule of Law Mission, EULEX, from 2011-13, I was particularly interested in the report’s analysis of the Kosovo judiciary.