In closing statements at the high-profile trial in Kosovo, the defence insisted that the kidney transplants at the Medicus clinic had no connection to people-trafficking as the indictment claims.
In its closing statements on Tuesday, the defence told Pristina Basic Court that the prosecution could not prove that the Medicus clinic owner, Lutfi Dervishi, was involved in organised crime in connection with people-trafficking.
Dervishi’s lawyer, Valon Hasani, said that the transplant of human organs is not related to people-trafficking unless it is carried out with the use of threats, force or kidnapping.
Hasani added that the prosecution did not claim that his client used any of these methods.
The lawyer argued that the sale and purchase of human organs was not a criminal offence.
“This was the case in Kosovo in 2008. There is no legal provision that makes the selling of human organs illegal,” the lawyer said.
Dervishi’s only obligation was to get written consent from the patient undergoing surgery, Hasani said.
He added that the evidence in the case file shows that all the Medicus clinic’s patients signed consent documents before transplants.
The lawyer said that despite prosecution claims that seven kidney transplants took place at the Medicus clinic and that Lutfi Dervishi participated in four of them, no evidence has been found to confirm the defendant’s involvement in the surgery.
Dervishi is being retried along with his son Arban Dervishi and the clinic’s head anaesthetist, Sokol Hajdini.
They were initially convicted in 2013 and the verdict said found that “multiple illegal kidney transplants” took place at the clinic in 2008.
Kosovo’s appeals court confirmed their convictions in March 2016, jailing Lutfi Dervishi and his son for eight years and Hajdini for five.
But a Supreme Court ruling overturned the original verdict on the basis of procedural irregularities and their retrial started in July 2017.
Hajdini told the court that in his 34 years of professional experience, he has never been in trouble with the law.
“I am not guilty and I do not feel guilty of what I am charged with. I only worked for the good of the patients and according to the law,” he said.
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