Former chief war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic told BIRN that while probing alleged organ-trafficking by Kosovo Liberation Army fighters, the Serbian authorities gathered evidence about President Hashim Thaci’s alleged role in wartime crimes, which was then passed to Hague investigators.

The Hague-based Specialist Prosecutor’s Office announced last month that it had filed a ten-count indictment to the Kosovo Specialist Chambers charging Thaci and others with a range of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder, enforced disappearances, persecution and torture. Prosecutors began questioning Thaci in The Hague on Monday.

Vukcevic, who was chief war crimes prosecutor from 2003 until the end of 2015, said the Serbian authorities collaborated with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague on investigations into the alleged trafficking of prisoners’ organs by KLA fighters.

“The Hague prosecution was investigating the crimes of [Kosovo Liberation Army commander turned politician Ramush] Haradinaj [who was ultimately acquitted] and so they went to the Yellow House [building in Albania where prisoners’ organs were allegedly removed], but they did not have a mandate for Albania because the Hague Tribunal itself was exclusively for the countries of the former Yugoslavia,” Vukcevic said.

“They saw what they saw, filmed it and so on, and later they gave us their findings,” he added.

Vukcevic and his colleagues then went to Albania, and with a local prosecutor visited around 12 sites where it was thought that organ-trafficking victims might have been buried. He said they also found evidence of Thaci’s role in crimes committed by KLA fighters during the Kosovo war.

They forwarded what they found to Council of Europe rapporteur Dick Marty, who issued an explosive report that alleged that KLA leaders, including Thaci, were involved in “organ trafficking, abductions and mistreatment of detainees” during the war.

Thaci, a wartime KLA commander who was interviewed by Hague prosecutors on Monday, has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

The Dick Marty report led to the establishment of the European Union’s Special Investigative Task Force to probe the claims.

Hague Tribunal chief war crimes prosecutor Serge Brammertz (left) meets Vladimir Vukcevic (centre) in Belgrade in September 2008. Photo: EPA/ALEKSANDAR PLAVEVSKI.

Vukcevic said the Serbian war crimes prosecution provided logistical support and cooperated in organising the questioning of some 400 witnesses for the task force.

“The cooperation between the War Crimes Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic of Serbia and SITF [the Special Investigative Task Force] lasted until September 2016 and was realised on the basis of requests for coordination,” the Serbian war crimes prosecution confirmed to BIRN.

It did not respond to BIRN’s questions about the alleged crimes, their victims and where they were committed.

After the task force’s work was complete in September 2016, the Kosovo Specialist Prosecutor’s Office was set up to prepare charges against suspects who will be tried at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague.

Both institutions are part of Kosovo’s justice system but are located in the Netherlands and staffed by internationals. They were set up under pressure from Kosovo’s Western allies and are resented by many Kosovo Albanians as an insult to the KLA’s war for liberation from Serbian rule.

Asked about Serbia’s role in providing evidence, the Kosovo Specialist Prosecutor’s Office said that it “does not provide information on the substance or mechanics of its investigation”.

Vukcevic also told BIRN that Thaci was being probed by Serbian prosecutors for alleged war crimes in a case dating back to the 1990s.

This caused a row in April 2015, when a Belgrade-based NGO organised a conference in the Serbian capital about Balkan countries’ European integration and invited Thaci as a speaker. The Serbian authorities threatened to arrest him if he entered the country.

The Serbian war crimes prosecution confirmed that it is “conducting pre-investigation proceedings against Hashim Thaci for committing the criminal offence of a war crime against civilians in co-perpetration [with others]”. It did not give details of the alleged crimes.