Serbia said yesterday it had a former Kosovo rebel witness who allegedly took part in removing the heart of a Serb prisoner for the international black market in organs during the 1990s Kosovo conflict.

A heart was harvested from a Serb prisoner

“We have a witness who testified about a medical procedure, done in northern Albania, that consisted of harvesting organs from Serbs kidnapped during the 1998-99 conflict in Kosovo,” Serbia’s war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic told AFP.

“He described a surgery harvesting a heart from a Serb prisoner at a location near (the northern Albanian town of) Kukes in the late 1990s,” and transporting the organ to the Rinas airport near the capital Tirana, the prosecutor said.

It was not immediately clear if the patient was dead or alive when the operation started, and the prosecutor would not give any more details.

The witness told prosecutors he received special medical training in how to harvest organs and described the operation he took part in “in detail”, according to the prosecution.

He added the heart “was sold on the black market”, Vukcevic said.

The prosecutor would not give any more details about the identity of the witness, other than to say he was a former KLA member currently under strict protection measures.

Claims of organ harvesting by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) during and after the 1998-99 conflict are being investigated by the European Union.