Former Serbian prosecutor: We secured evidence against Hashim Thaci and handed it to The Hague

Former Serbian war crimes chief prosecutor Vladimir Vukchev has said that as long as he was controlling organ trafficking allegations by Kosovo Liberation Army fighters, Serbian authorities collected evidence about President Hashim Thaci's alleged role in wartime crimes, which was then handed over to Hague investigators.

The Hague-based Prosecutor's Office announced last month that it had filed a ten-point indictment in Kosovo's Specialised Chambers, accusing Thaci and others with a series of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder, forced disappearances, persecution and torture.

Vukcevic, who was chief war crimes prosecutor from 2003 until the end of 2015, told BIRN in Belgrade that Serbian authorities co-operated with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague for investigations into alleged organ trafficking of prisoners by KLA fighters.

The Hague prosecutor was investigating the crimes [of Kosovo Liberation Army commander who later became politician, Ramush Haradinaj, who was finally released] and thus went to the Yellow House

, but there was no mandate for Albania because The Hague tribunal itself was exclusively for the countries of the former Yugoslavia”, Vukchev said.

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

As Balkan Insight writes, Vukchev and his colleagues later went to Albania and with a local prosecutor visited about 12 areas where it was thought that organ trafficking victims might have been buried. He said they found evidence of Thaci's role in crimes committed by KLA fighters during the war in Kosovo.

“They conveyed what the Council of Europe rapporteurs, Dick Marty, who issued an explosive report claiming KLA leaders, including Thaci, were involved in “organ trafficking, kidnapping and mistreatment of arrested” during the war”.
Thaci, a commander of The wartime KLA, which was interviewed by Hague prosecutors on Monday, has repeatedly denied any alleged crimes.
Dick Marty's report led to the creation of the European Union's Special Investigative Task Force to investigate the allegations.

Vukchev said that Serbian war crimes prosecution secured logistical support and co-operated in organising the questioning of about 400 witnesses for this task force.

“Co-operation between the War Crimes Prosecutor's Office in the Republic of Serbia and SIPF [The Special Security Task Force] lasted until September 2016 and was realised on the basis of co-ordination requests”, the Serbian war crimes prosecutor confirmed.

The office did not answer BIRN's questions about alleged crimes, their victims and where they were committed.

After the task of the task force was completed in September 2016, the Kosovo Specialised Prosecutor's Office was established to prepare charges against suspects who will be tried in Kosovo Special Chambers in The Hague.

Asked about Serbia's role in obtaining evidence, the Kosovo Specialised Prosecutor's Office said that “does not provide information about its substance or the mechanic of the investigation”.

Vukchev also said Thaci was being investigated 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, NGO, organised a conference in the Serbian capital for European integration of Balkan countries and invited Thaci as speaker. Serbian authorities threatened to arrest him if he entered the country.

The Serbian war crimes prosecutor confirmed that it is “conducting investigation procedures against Hashim Thaci for committing the criminal offence of a war crime against civilians in co-ordination [with others]”. She gave no details about the alleged crimes.