DNA samples destroyed, forensics expert says....

19 december 2010, kl 20:32Skrivet av andjeloAnmäl ! 

DNA samples destroyed, forensics expert says 19 December 2010 | 15:17 | Source: Tanjug BELGRADE, GENEVA -- Former head of the UNMIK Forensics and Missing Persons Office Jose Pablo Baraybar said that 400 DNA samples of victims kidnapped in Kosovo were destroyed. He added that the samples had been destroyed in Germany, with approval of the Hague Tribunal. He said it was strange that former Hague Tribunal Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte had published a book on organ trafficking, when she could have started an investigation into the case while she was still in office, B92 program Reakcija revealed. “German police officers collected 400 DNA samples in Kosovo in 1999. I asked for those samples for identification purposes in 2002. The Germans said they had destroyed them with the Hague Tribunal's permission,” Baraybar, a forensic anthropologist, told Swiss daily Le Temps. He underlined that at the time an investigation could have also been launched into the cases of 470 persons, most of them Kosovo Serbs, who went missing after the arrival of KFOR, reported B92. According to the Geneva-based daily, Baraybar was among the first people to learn about the illicit trade in human organs. “When I came to Kosovo in 2002, there was already information about this, but two months later one source told us about the existence of the Yellow House. The file comprised eight testimonies, by people who did not know each other, who drove prisoners to the border or to the Yellow House itself,” he said. Baraybar accused Albanian Minister of Public Works Lulzim Basha of having knowledge about the organ trade, because he acted as his interpreter during a private visit to the Yellow House. According to him, not only was the Hague Tribunal not interested in starting an investigation, but the U.S. envoy in Priština also showed no concern. Baraybar told B92 about the visit to the Yellow House, where they found drugs, muscle relaxants, medical needles and even one blood transfusion kit. “We could not imagine that peasants in the middle of nowhere knew how to use these things. All of it was taken to the Hague Tribunal. There were also traces of blood on the walls of the Yellow House,” he said.