"Independent" Kosovo: Gangland Spills Savagery Worldwide

By Anna Filimonova
Thursday, 20 Sep 2012

The Western power centers use the "Republic of Kosovo" as a testing ground for working out the ways to create a quasi-state that could be defined as an abnormal criminal case of global scope. The final goal is reshaping the whole of South East Europe. (www.strategic-culture.org)

The states below the «first echelon» are subject to the formula «back to slavery and barbarity». This is a model of authoritative outside governance entailing devastation of natural environment, extraction of resources and creation of disastrous economy and ‘stillborn» state structures along with extreme pauperization of population. And this is not all. Control over vast space presupposes no independent way of development for a national state along with the creation of destructive criminal potential. The accelerated criminalization of East Europe (including the Balkans) has already been initiated. The crime has achieved the scope that makes Jean-Francois Geiro, a well-known French criminologist; say an almost perfect laboratory of deviant states functions as part of new Europe’s criminal corps. (1) 

The wave of crime and corruption has hit the Balkans. The «Republic of Kosovo» plays the role of mafia’s citadel that freely intensifies all kinds of dangerous criminal activities under the protection of US military bases. First of all drugs transit. 

Mainly the drug flows come to Europe from Afghanistan and Asian states crossing the corridors in Turkey and the Balkans. 80% of traffic goes through the Balkans. The Northern heroin (Afghanistan – Turkey – Hungary – Romania) and Southern cocaine (Turkey – Greece – Macedonia – Albania – Italy) are the two major routes. Turkey has become a key foothold of drug dealers. Even the small part of cargo captured by police is impressive: only in the second half of 2011 Turkey confiscated more drugs than all the 27 states of the European Union together. Albanian criminal groups are responsible for the major part of trafficking to the Balkans and Western Europe. They are closely connected to Italian, Montenegrin, Turkish and Kurdish drug cartels (the last ones control the vast network of drug traffic routes from Afghanistan), as well as Caucasian criminal gangs. (2)

«The Pristina Republic of Kosovo» carries out two criminal functions. It itself serves as a source of organized crime. The very existence of paramilitary subversive-terrorist formation called the Kosovo Liberation Army, thinly veiled as the so called Kosovo security force or Kosovo police, confirms the fact. On the other hand, the region has become an area of «crime dissemination» into Europe and other parts of the world. 

The first criminal function of «Kosovo project» presupposes full control of the «Republic of Kosovo» quasi-state by former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) militants. They hold strategic positions, fully control «the state», social and political life; the civilian population is subject to institutionalized political, psychological and physical coercion. 

According to Western special services the Kosovo national intelligence service K-SHIK is responsible for the terror against its own population, it carries out punitive actions against the political opponents of ruling clique. It’s the «boss of Kosovo project» who approves the activities. This fact is confirmed by Kadri Veseli, former head of the Kosovo Intelligence Service, a key political partner of «Kosovo Prime-Minister» Hashim Thaçi, who said the service was supported by many partners – 25 intelligence services, the US contribution was very significant. 

The Kosovo national intelligence service launched a campaign of political terror after the Yugoslavia bombings by NATO in 1999 and deployment of international forces in Kosovo. Back then thousands of Serbs and Albanians, who were not loyal to the Kosovo Liberation Army, were killed. A US top official in Kosovo (he prefers anonymity) asserts the CIA sponsored the K-SHIK and that the special service was converted into an instrument crime and politics control in Kosovo. Florin Krasniqi, a former Kosovo Liberation Army militant, who then became a member of Kosovo parliament, says Veseli had direct contacts with US and British intelligence services and offered everything they wanted on a silver plate. Kadri Veseli received funds and all kinds of support and supplies from them. The USA and other NATO states still support the K-SHIK. Hashim Thaci still enjoys the support of Washington… (3)

The Kosovo criminal organizations are far from being a shadow govenment, quite to the contrary the dysfunction of the «Republic of Kosovo» state structures makes them the only real ruling power. The specific feature is that there is no merger of crime with clan and «state» system. It was an integral part of it from the very start. The crime is «militant»; its methods are very aggressive. It’s a phenomenon of international scale: the criminal cartels control the whole regions; their «industry» conquers more and more space in Europe and the USA becoming a nightmare of police. The Albanian mafia is the fifth organized structure in the world that distinguishes itself by «immense potential of growth». The language, traditions, and ties of blood make it a fertile ground impenetrable for police operatives. The family connections let the Albanian mafia create an unbreakable criminal chain: the clans members have their daughters married to the «comrade in arms» from Afghanistan and Turkey. They create a producer-consumer chain. This way the family criminal business prospers. 

Part of income goes to the Kosovo Liberation Army (there is no whatsoever control exercised over the «black funds» of drug clans) that acts under the protection of US «Kosovo project» promoters. 

The US needs Kosovo for deployment of military installations on its territory in order to control South East Europe where the routes to Middle East oil riches start. There are the following NATO or NATO used military facilities in the Balkans: Hungary (Taszar), Romania (Deveselu, the port of Constanza, Mihail Kogalniceanu air base ), Bulgaria (the Novo Selo Training Range, Aitos Logistics Center near Burgas, Bezmer Air Base near Yambola, Graf Ignatievo air force base), Bosnia and Herzegovina (installations near Banja Luka, Mostar, Sarajevo, a small facility near Doboj), Croatia (Shepurin, Slun, Đakovo, Pula), Macedonia (Petrovec, a base near Kumanovo, Krivolak), Greece (Crete, and installations near Larissa) and finally Kosovo, (Bondstill and two installations near Montiff near Gnillane, a base near Vitina, artillery installation near Kaçanik, a base near Balovac near Podujeva). (4) According to Geiro the Kosovo Liberation Army is a punitive force that includes heads of mafia clans and is destined to oppress civilian population. It could never come to power without NATO and other Western power centers. (5)

The disguised Kosovo Liberation Army starts to intensify its activities to the degree of becoming a force capable of exploding the region again. For instance, in April 2012 a brutal murder took place in Macedonia, five Macedonians killed by Albanians. According to Macedonian special services a large Albanian paramilitary unit appeared near the Kosovo border, the uniform worn had the Kosovo Liberation Army insignia on it. Armed Albanian formations wearing the KLA emblems appeared in the vicinity of Macedonian cities Skopje and Tetovo. Bulgarian media outlet Novinite says the destabilization of Macedonia may spark an international conflict in Albania, Serbia, Kosovo, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania and Turkey in half an hour. (6)

The merger of Albanian mafia involvement in drug trafficking along with international terrorists and radical Islamist groupings is a special case to talk about. Al Qaeda units were based in Kosovo and Metohija during the Kosovo conflict. Bashkim Gazidede, a former head of Albanian secret police unit, headed the organization’s Balkans branch. Muhammad Rabee al-Zawahiri, the brother of Ayman al-Zavahiri, the current Al Qaeda leader, was one of Kosovo Liberation Army commanders. (7) Now Kosovo has become a training center of Syrian militants. The Syrian «opposition» asked the Kosovo Liberation Army for help in April 2012. It promised the recognition of Kosovo by «new Damascus» in return. The terrorist KLA leaders and Islamic extremists from Bosnia and Herzegovina rendered «support» in training Syrian paramilitary groups. Dzevad Galiashevic, member of expert team for South East Europe in fight against terrorism, claims the training centers are still based in the previous KLA locations, including the territory of Macedonia. Abdussamed Bushatlic, a former Al-Mujahedeen militant, a Wahhabi movement leader in Bosnia and Herzegovina, was among those who were seen there. According to Galiashevic missionary and ideological activities are conducted in Macedonia, Kosovo is a place of military preparatory activities. All terrorist activities are done under the patronage of NATO- led Kosovo Force (KFOR). The training camps are located in Drenitsa (the hamlet of Likovats, Yablanitsa and Glodjana). There are new training facilities built for mujahedeen from Muslim countries. One of them is situated in Drenica, another in Metohija (the hamlet of Smonitsa near Djakovica. Zoran Stijovic, former Serbian State Security officer in the 1990s, says the training is conducted for two types of operations: subversive-terrorist activities and intelligence gathering. The instructors are not Albanians only, the export model of Syrian revolution is prepared with the help of CIA operatives, Albanian KLA terrorists and the extremists from Bosnia and Herzegovina. (8) On June 20 2012 the Syrian army started a battle for the second largest city Aleppo, there were 400 «rebels» liquidated. The identification of the dead showed Kosovo Albanians fought on the side of terrorists along with the mercenaries from other countries. 

It seems to be unexplainable; while the Western intelligence services «beat the drums» and tell breath taking details about local and international scale «operations» of Albanian criminals’, the Western political circles and international bodies seem to ignore the activities that threaten the security of their own countries…

A feature common to the serial outbreaks of unrest in the course of the Arab Spring and the conflicts in the post-Yugoslavian space was the involvement of the armed opposition which had grown out of local criminal or downright terrorist groups in the resulting transitions. The Arab countries which ended up on the US hit list over the past years – Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, and, at the moment, Syria - came under the neocolonial pressure from Washington for their stable statehoods and tendency to handle natural resources independently. The coups aimed at wrestling control over the resources from the respective governments employed NATO as the main force with local groups, mostly those of politicized Islam, contributing crucial assistance. The US, Qatar, and the European trio comprising Germany, Great Britain, and France armed and nourished financially the Muslim fundamentalists in Libya. The US, the trio, and Turkey, backed by the league of Arab princes, gave money to the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, the country where the group used to be banned. The new and de facto occupational regimes which pop up on the ruins of the bulldozed statehoods and readily pass the respective nations' key assets to transnational companies typically agree to a ridiculously narrow political autonomy of the nations under their control.

In the Balkan region, the occupation of a part of the Serbian territory and its political separation from the original country  during the 1999 NATO aggression led to the now maturing Kosovo independence. When the conflict over the province was brewing, the opposition in it was armed and already acted as a group with a subversive and terrorist agenda. In 1999, the US Republican Political Committee issued a report titled “The Kosovo Liberation Army: Does Clinton Policy Support Group with Terror, Drug Ties? From 'Terrorists' to 'Partners'”. The document contained a description of one of the first offensives launched by the Kosovo Liberation Army – a series of 1996 attacks on Serbian refugee camps in Croatia and Bosnia. According to the document, KLA officers were supposed to receive US training with an eye to transforming the group into a political force (1).

In July, 2008, Serbia's Kurir shed light on a secret resolution passed in Brussels on March 13, 1999 by the NATO top brass. It combined the finalized decision to bomb Yugoslavia with a plan for the creation of an independent Kosovo which would function with the NATO backing and would eventually merge into a Greater Albania, drawing along Serbia's southern part up to Aleksinc, the west of Macedonia, Montenegro's Malësi, and a chunk of northern Greece. The projected mission of that Greater Albania was to dominate the Balkans as a region and the entire transit web linking it to Asia and Africa (2).

The Pristina regime whose record opened with a campaign of terror against the civilian population was quick to acquire, with NATO's help, a serious military component: when the armed phase of the conflict with Belgrade was over, the KLA did not put down arms but re-entered the scene in the guise of the Kosovo Protection Corps which was renamed to the Kosovo Security Force in 2009 and to the Kosovo Army by the end of 2011. The criminal groups involved continued to exist side by side with NATO, various Western missions, and countless NGOs in Kosovo as the captioning game played out.

In December, 2010 Swiss prosecutor and Council of Europe rapporteur Dick Marty confronted the world audiences with the Balkans' open secret – his sensational report detailed the region's sweeping organized crime and, particularly, the illicit human organs trafficking in which the Kosovo administration and KLA top commanders were heavily implicated. Somebody Rexep, an Albanian from the KLA, says that in Kosovo everything in and around the illegal business is in the hands of the administration and that – for fear of death - nobody has any chance to run drug or human trafficking or anything like that without the regime's blessing (3).

Dick Marty's report showed that the KLA headed by Kosovo present-day premier Hashim Thaci (a notorious butcher nicknamed the Snake) kidnapped Serbs resident in the province and the Albanians suspected of collaborating with Belgrade, to traffic them to the north of Albania, where the people were killed and their organs carved out for sale on the black market. The UN, NATO, and OSCE, as well as the majority of the Western governments, pretended to be unaware of what was going on. K-144, a protected witness of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, claims that 4 million Deutsch marks landed in Thaci's pockets as proceeds from dealing organs extracted from slain Serbs (4).

Bernard Kouchner was the first Head of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). Oddly enough, the Médecins Sans Frontières group of which he was co-founder smuggled weapons when the conflict was raging in the post-Yugoslavian space and was caught red-handed at 43 checkpoints in Bosnia, 25 – in Croatia, and 14 - in Kosovo (5). The withdrawal of the Serbian police from Kosovo enabled Thaci's gangsters to kidnap people in the province with no risk of meeting with resistance. Some sources are convinced that the kidnapped were placed and subjected to illicit extractions in the NATO bases. Indeed, 6 – 14 aircrafts took off at Camp Bondsteel NATO base in Kosovo daily, and suspicions multiply that the flights could be used to deliver human organs to recipients in West Europe, mostly in Great Britain (6).

On January 7, 2011, 50 British surgeons voiced a call for the legalization of human organs trade, citing the steady increase in demand and the freedom of choice for those eager to be donors due to financial regards (7). No doubt, human organs trafficking has a potential to become a source of criminal enrichment on pars with the drug business. Der Spiegel argues that, in the global distribution of roles in the market of illicit transplantations, most of the buyers are found in the US, Canada, Israel, and  Saudi Arabia while most of the donors – in China, India, the Philippines, Egypt, and Moldova (8). The independent Kosovo, a territory with a reputation of horror land, acts as a major trafficking hub in the framework.

Investigating the nightmare pictured in Marty's report is supposed to be the responsibility of EULEX. The mission currently oversees two probes in Pristina: prosecutor Clint Williamson looks into the 1998-199 story around the Yellow House near Burrel in central Albania, and prosecutor Jonathan Ratel – into the Medicus clinic case. Initially, in November, 2008, the latter case was opened by the Kosovo police and its UNMIK colleagues, but later EULEX took over. The probe is still incomplete, but, shockingly, it seems clear at this point that only 9 people are to face charges, the key figures in the number being Pristina University professor of medicine Lutfi Dervishi, Medicus founder Ilir Recaj, Turkish surgeon Yusuf Sonmez, and an Israeli named Moshe Harel. The Medicus inquiry is at least    conducted in an open mode, while the Yellow House drama is being dealt with under wraps for the stated reason that the investigators must be kept safe on site. The real parallel between the two cases, however, is that both are stalling: Williamson, for example, says no completion should be expected within the next couple of years. Importantly in the context, EULEX rejects any form of cooperation with Serbia's law-enforcement agencies  (9) and maintains that internationalizing the case is off the table. Even if the Medicus case unravels to some sort of a final point, it will continue to revolve around the tiny clinic, with the Kosovo administration and its influential international patrons unaffected.

The inescapable conclusion stemming from the pertinent materials is that the heinous crimes can be traced to the uppermost administration levels  in Pristina. The office of Serbia's war crimes prosecutor says the KLA command posts were sited in the Prifc and Tropojë villages. Tropojë, the place to which mujahideen flocked from across the world, was where the KLA headquarters functioned. For a reason that invites guesswork, the Haradinaj brothers – Nasim, Shkelzën, Daut, and  Ramush – are known to have frequented the village hospital. Tropojë, Kukës, and Bajram Curri served as the training bases, the latter also hosting wounded KLA guerillas at a medical centre. Captive Serbs, Roma, and Albanians “guilty” of disloyalty were held in hangars near the abandoned barracks and firing ranges. An illicit detention facility was set up at the Deva deserted mine, with tunnel outlets on both sides of the border, and used to torture the captives or to extract organs from the healthier of them. The Viçidol village is located not far from Tropojë – in April, 1998, it was visited by the entire KLA command which stayed at a house owned by the family of Albanian premier Sali Berisha. The reception was coordinated by Suleiman Berisha, the brother of the premier's uncle and the man who kept in touch with the Kosovo envoy to Tirana. The village was the start of a route massively supplying arms to Kosovo (to the Junik and Borovina villages in the proximity of Decani), and, moreover, members of the Berisha family tentatively were a part of the hierarchy in a criminal group which kidnapped people to extract their organs for sale in West Europe where a heart or a kidney can cost as much as Euro 120,000. A big camp where up to 200 guerillas per shift were trained existed right in Tirana and was equipped with a hospital. Funds were poured into the KLA internationally, mostly from Switzerland, via the Tirana-based Dardania Bank (10).

A scandal erupted in 2012 when Der Spiegel released facts concerning the Kosovo administration's complicity in human organs trafficking, a partnership between the Kosovo criminals and several German citizens, and the organs supply from  Medicus to medical institutions in Berlin, Göttingen, and Regensburg. The organs went illicitly to recipients who paid large sums of money and received treatment ahead of other patients. Reportedly, Vera, an immigrant from Russia, sold her kidney for Euro 8,000, and it was bought by Walter, a German industrialist, for Euro 81,000. Medicus was, in reality, owned by Manfred Ernst Beer, an urologist from Berlin with business ties to the registered owner Lufti Dervishi, whose family suggested opening a clinic in Kosovo. EULEX would not comment on the hypothesis that Medicus was an element of a wide international network of illicit transplantology (11). It came as a vivid illustration of the proportions of the phenomenon that Carla Del Ponte quoted a Middle Eastern intelligence service in her “The Hunt: Me and War Criminals” as asserting that a sheik said he regretted that he had been given a Serbian heart but was glad to be alive (12). Up to date, the abundance of implicating materials does not appear to translate into any progress in the probe. The stalemate is in part owed to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia where, unbelievably, the whole bulk of evidence pertinent to the Yellow House case opened in January, 2005 was destroyed in 2006, with no indictments produced. Evidently, the investigation spotlight reached figures too important to be disturbed.  

The KLA commanders turned independent Kosovo's leaders are confident of their immunity to prosecution and are not going to tone down their criminal activities. In a conversation which took place shortly after the assassination of Serbian premier Zoran Đinđić, Hashim Thaci and Agim Çeku discussed plans for exporting illicit money to Serbia, buying into the country's investment funds, and thus grabbing enterprises and land lots across it. Thaci said Pristina's agents should start companies in London or – even better, as he remarked – in Russia, take part in the privatization in Serbia, buy lands, food-processing factories, and real estate in major cities within a money-laundering campaign. He also suggested partnering the Croats who already got plenty of land in Vojvodina cheap (13).

* * *

The Euro-Atlantic blueprint for the future of South East Europe gives a big role to the criminal enclave called the Republic of Kosovo. It is to become a base of world-level organized crime, and that is already happening. Drug supply to Europe, illicit organs extraction and trafficking, campaigns of terror against the resident populations and ethnic cleansing are hallmarks of the Kosovo independence which sends criminal metastases all over Europe while it stays under a delusion that its civilization standards are intact…

The KLA was instrumental in NATO's game aimed at undermining Yugoslavia. Now that the federation is gone, Serbia is nevertheless the top regional power which can, moreover, anytime boost its potential by truly engaging with Russia. Clearly, the KLA will be preserved and cultivated as a counterforce. It has full political control over Kosovo, including the predominantly Serbian north of the province, is heavily armed and well-funded,  and enjoys permanent support from Washington. With the Pristina administration enthroned, Kosovo is a territory of chaos dominated by criminal groups thinly disguised to look like credible officialdom. While the probes into the organized crime in Kosovo remain an imitation of justice, the problem is spilling worldwide.

(1) http://www.vesti-online.com/Vesti/Hronika/233286/Kriminalci-vladaju-Balkanom-

(2) Balkanski koridori heroina i kokaina // Daily Survey. Atina, Ankara, 22 januara 2012. http://www.mfa.gov.rs/Srpski/Bilteni/Srpski/b230112_s.html

(3) http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/110321/kosovo-intelligence-services

(4) http://www.fakti.org/oruzje/nato-oko-srbije/za-kontrolu-balkana-i-opkoljavanje-rusije

(5) http://www.vesti-online.com/Vesti/Hronika/233528/Mafijasi-americki-saveznici-

(6) http://www.vesti-online.com/Vesti/Srbija/220576/Gorece-pola-Balkana

(7) http://kpolisa.com/KP17/kp17-I-2-VeselinKonatar.pdf

(8) http://www.novosti.rs/vesti/naslovna/aktuelno.291.html:380208-Albanski-t...

(9) Petras J.  The Washington – “Moderate Islam” Alliance: ContainingRebellion Defending Empire // The Law Projects Center New York City Area Offices. 12.16.2011. 

(10) http://www.kurir-info.rs/ubijajte-civile-clanak-23588

(11) McAllester Matt, Martinovic Jovo Kosovo's Mafia: A hotbed of human trafficking // Globalpost, March 27, 2011

(12) pressonline.rs

(13) NATO protiv Srbije. Transkripti razgovora stranih obaveštajaca u Srbiji i inostranstvu

(6) NATO protiv Srbije. Transkripti razgovora stranih obaveštajaca u Srbiji i inostranstvu

(7) vesti-online.com

(8) blic.rs

(9) http://www.novosti.rs/dodatni_sadrzaj/clanci.119.html:390530-Vampiri-zute-kuce

(10) http://www.novosti.rs/dodatni_sadrzaj/clanci.119.html:391694-Biznis-brace-Berisa

(11) blic.rs

(12) http://www.novosti.rs/dodatni_sadrzaj/clanci.119.html:390675-Dokazi-protiv-Tacija

(13) NATO protiv Srbije. Transkripti razgovora stranih obaveštajaca u Srbiji i inostranstvu