When the time came for Kosovo doctor Lutfi Dervishi and his son Arban to be imprisoned in 2016 for one of the Balkans’ most gruesome post-war crimes, the pair had vanished.
BIRN can reveal that Kosovo Police believe the urologist and his son, suspected of operating an organ-trafficking ring from the Medicus clinic in Pristina and currently on retrial, had slipped across the border into Serbia.
In doing so, they joined a growing number of bail and jail dodgers taking advantage of the lack of security cooperation between Serbia and Kosovo, which declared independence in 2008 but is not recognised by Belgrade.
On paper, EU and UN initiatives have paved the way for police cooperation, intelligence exchanges and recognition of international arrest warrants.
But in practice, suspected murderers and drug dealers are sidestepping justice by crossing the border, safe in the knowledge that there has never been a successful case of extradition between Kosovo and Serbia.
One doctor suspected of carrying out illegal IVF treatment in Kosovo has even been offering her services after fleeing police to Serbia.
The families of those still missing from the Kosovo conflict also complain that their search for loved ones and justice is being seriously hampered by the lack of cooperation.
Serbia’s Justice Ministry, the Kosovo Police and the EU rule-of-law mission in Kosovo, EULEX, have said that there has been a regular flow of information between Pristina and Belgrade in recent years.
But interviews with officials working for EU and Kosovo institutions, as well as analysts who have studied the issue, suggest the process is fraught with difficulties and rarely results in decisive action.
This is largely because Serbia refuses to even tacitly recognise Kosovo’s independence, but is also a result of the mistrust and ill feeling that has built up on both sides, they explain.
“By exercising non-cooperation on legal and security matters, we continue to consider both countries as ‘safe zones’ for criminals,” Florian Qehaja of the Kosovo Centre for Security Studies think-tank told BIRN.
A suspected organ trafficker’s bolthole
For more read the full of article at The Balkaninsight
