An Albanian court has dismissed a libel suit filed against Dick Marty by an Albanian family over claims that their home was used as a clinic for removing organs.
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Marty, a member of the Swiss Senate, investigated allegations of organ trafficking in Kosovo on behalf of the Council of Europe. He filed a report in December 2010, in which he alleged that after the end of hostilities with Serbia in 1999, high-ranking members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) had been involved in the murder of mostly Serbian prisoners, whose organs were then trafficked.
The prisoners were said to have been held in the so-called “yellow house” in the village of Rribe in northern Albania before being killed.
The family were seeking €200,000 (SFr244,000) damages at Tirana District Court for allegedly having being linked in Marty’s report to events at the infamous house.
Marty told the Swiss News Agency that the family in question had not been named in the report, nor had he ever mentioned them in interviews. The report names a different family as owners of the house. It says the others had left it before it was used as a prison.
The Council adopted the report in January and called for prompt action to determine whether the allegations were true.
Among those named in the report are Hashim Thaci, the current prime minister of Kosovo.
Thaci and his government, as well as Albania, have denied Marty’s claims. When the report was made public, the Kosovo government responded by saying it would take “all necessary legal and political means” to counter the “fabrications”.
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On February 17, 2008, the former Serbian province of Kosovo declared its independence. The Swiss government was one of the first to recognise Kosovo as an independent state. Ethnic Albanians make up 92 per cent of the population of 2.2 million, but Serbs still dominate the north of the country.
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If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.