Jail for Kosovo organ trade

PRISTINA - Agence France-Presse

An EU-led court in Kosovo sentenced yesterday five people to up to eight years in prison for illegal organ harvesting and transplants at a Pristina clinic in 2008. The five defendants, among them Pristina urologist Lütfi Dervişi, were sentenced to between one to eight years each, said judge Arkadiusz Sedek. Two defendants in the trial that has opened in 2011 were acquitted. Police raided the Kosovo clinic in 2008 after a Turkish man collapsed at Pristina airport waiting for a flight back to Istanbul after having had a kidney removed. The indictment said at least 30 illegal kidney removals and transplants were carried out at the clinic that year. It names Moshe Harel as the mastermind of a network for recruiting donors and finding recipients, while Turkish Yusuf Sönmez is said to have performed surgery.