Certified German politician Doris Pack, head of the vote monitoring expressed her concern about “vote-rigging.” One polling station in Drenica, which was a solid base for Thaci’s PDK reported overwhelming turnouts at the two municipalities of Skenderaj with 93.68% and Gilogovc with 86.94%. There were 1.6 million people eligible to vote. In three polling stations more ballot papers were cast than the number of people registered to vote.

Petrit Selimi says the party would have prevailed, but the filing of 171 appeals had postponed the formation of a new government. Complaints included stuffing ballot boxes, multiple voting and defective verification with ultraviolet lights. A new election has been scheduled to be held on January 9, 2011.

Another problem is that two days after the election, Swiss politician and former prosecutor for the Council of Europe, Dick Marty implicated Thaci in drug smuggling and murder, and claims to have the proof. Marty allegedly conducted the two-year investigation into organized crime in Kosovo and accused the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) of removing at least 300 ethnic Serbs and Kosovar
enemies by imprisoning them in jails in Albania. The report has been endorsed by the Council of Europe and has ordered a complete investigation. Prime Minister Sali Berisha of Albania states his country is completely open for investigation.

Thaci and his group of guerilla commanders from the region of Drenica allegedly kept the captives in secret detention areas in Albania after the 1998-1999 war ended, transferred the men to the Medicus Clinic founded by a European philanthropist who aided Albanian doctors during the 1999 Kosovo war, and performed secret and illegal organ transplants and shipped the organs to Istanbul.

The Medicus Clinic, located in a poor suburb near downtown Pristina has been alleged to have been founded by Dr. Lutfi Dervishi, a former secretary of health who provided the clinic with a false license to operate. Turkish surgeon, Yusuf Sonmez has become the subject of an international manhunt. Referred to as “Doctor Vulture” and “Turkish Frankenstein” the situation has horrible
reminders of the Nazi concentration camps and subsequent egregious human experiments performed by German surgeons.

Prosecutors also believe Shaip Muja, a former KLA “medical commander based in Albania may have overseen the operations at Medicus.

The claims first became public in 2008 when chief war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte’s book, The Hunt: Me and the War Criminals claimed Kosovo Albanians were smuggling organs of kidnapped enemies. Her memoirs spurred the Council of Europe investigation. Del Ponte’s book originated from information she claimed to have received from Western investigative journalists, according to the
Parliamentary Assembly Council of Europe (P.A.C.E.) who were working for a US based documentary producer American Radio Works. Ms. Del Ponte has since been sent to Argentina by the Swiss government as her nation’s ambassador.

Seven people were charged with international organ trafficking which was based in Kosovo alleging poor people were hired from slums, and promised payment of up to $20,000 for their kidneys. The harvested organs were sent to patients in Israel and Canada.

The Kosovo government has rejected all allegations of human organ trafficking, and heroin smuggling and invites the United Nations war crimes tribunal to investigate the case. Senator Marty alleges human organ trafficking has been going on for years.

Kosovo’s government has been thrown under the bus before, but the timing and context of the allegations has cost Thaci a lot of credibility. He claims the reports to be “ill-intentioned propaganda” intended to undermine Kosovo’s independence that Serbia refuses to acknowledge.

The report however alleges more than organ trafficking. On a larger scale the “Drenica” group participates in much more crime and corruption including murder, trafficking of women, heroin distribution and money laundering. Thaci calls the continued PACE claims libelous. Reports filed by the U.S., DEA, FBI, and other country intelligence agencies have stated that the Drenica group members
are always named as key players for organized crime.

Why hasn’t the U.S participated in this investigation? This past summer Vice President Joseph Biden met with Thaci to “reaffirm the United States’ full support for an independent, democratic, whole, and multi-ethnic Kosovo.” Biden also “reiterated the US firm support for Kosovo’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

All of this certainly makes you wonder doesn’t it?

Karadzic wants both Sweden and the United States to be forced to provide evidence confirming the immunity deal he claims he was granted.
He requested the UN’s war crimes court to press the two countries for the evidence of the deal in a court submission Monday. “The information is critical to (his) case,” he said in his submission.

Karadzic claims he struck a deal with top US official Richard Holbrooke in July 1996. In return for disappearing from the public eye, he would be shielded from prosecution by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), he says.

But Karadzic also sought the court’s help in interviewing Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, who had helped mediate an end to the Balkans conflict.
“Mr. Bildt was in daily contact with Holbrooke during the period in which the agreement was made and was jointly responsible for obtaining the resignation of Dr. Karadzic,” he claimed.

He had so far received no response to his requests for an interview with Bildt. Holbrooke, who was the US peace negotiator in Bosnia at the time, has insisted that no such deal existed.

Karadzic, currently awaiting trial before the ICTY, claims the US government had indicated that it had documents relating to the deal. None have yet been produced, however. The tribunal ruled in December that the alleged immunity deal, even if it existed, would be invalid and could not stop Karadzic’s prosecution.

Karadzic, 63, was arrested on a Belgrade bus last July, 13 years after he was first indicted. He faces 11 charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, notably for the 44-month siege of Sarajevo that left 10,000 dead and the July 1995 massacre of around 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica.

Supporters of the new measures say the expanded database will help prevent crime, but civil rights groups have expressed privacy concerns. Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz. sponsored the 2005 law that gave the Justice Department this authority.

It is being erroneously reported that thirteen states have implemented similar laws and that these laws have been upheld in court. Thirteen states have implemented laws, and in November 2007, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit did rule that all convicted federal felons must provide DNA samples to a federal database available to police departments throughout the country. In 2005, the Third Circuit ruled that a convicted bank robber had to submit DNA samples to CODIS. Also a New Jersey state appeals court upheld a comparable state law in 2005. Notice the term “convicted”

Justice Department

About 1.2 million additional people could be added to the FBI’s Combined DNA Indexing System (CODIS) every year under the expansion. Erik Ablin, Justice Department spokesman, said the DNA collection would be subject to the same privacy laws applied to current DNA sampling. That means none of it would be used for identifying genetic traits, diseases or disorders. People who are not convicted can request the destruction of their DNA samples.

American Civil Liberties Union

The new regulation would mean that the federal government could store DNA samples of people who are not guilty of any crime, said Jesselyn McCurdy, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.
“Now innocent people’s DNA will be put into this huge CODIS database, and it will be very difficult for them to get it out if they are not charged or convicted of a crime,” McCurdy said.

Thirteen States

The thirteen states which have enacted DNA laws are Alaska, Arizona, California, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

Homeland Security?

The Homeland Security Department — the federal agency charged with policing immigration — supports the new rule. “DNA is a proven law-enforcement tool,” DHS spokesman Russ Knocke said.
The rule would not allow for DNA samples to be collected from immigrants who are legally in the United States or those being processed for admission, unless the person was arrested.

Micheal Chertoff needs to stay home
Homeland Security Secretary is headed by Michael Chertoff, who was recently in Canada discussing the Bush administration’s push to create stricter identity systems including the so-called “Server in the Sky” program to share fingerprint databases among the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia.
When asked about concerns some critics are raising over the privacy aspects of sharing of that kind of data, very personal data, among four countries is quite a scary thing. Secretary Chertoff replied, “Well, first of all, a fingerprint is hardly personal data because you leave it on glasses and silverware and articles all over the world, they’re like footprints. They’re not particularly private.”
Chertoff’s comments have drawn sharp criticism from Jennifer Stoddart, the Canadian official in charge of privacy issues. “Fingerprints constitute extremely personal information for which there is clearly a high expectation of privacy”.

Home of the FREE

There have been numerous questions raised about how this Administration is treating our personal information. Secretary Chertoff’s comments show a new reason to worry — they don’t think it’s “personal” at all. I wonder if they see DNA the same.

DO SOMETHING OR DO NOTHING
The law will soon be published in the Federal Register and will then be subject to a 30-day comment period.

On the Net:
State Laws on DNA Data Banks:

http://www.ncsl.org/programs/cj/dnadatabanks.htm

http://www.dnaresource.com/documents/2008DNAExpansionLegislation.pdf

Senator Dick Durbin

A U.S. Senate hearing focused on the use of rape as a weapon in armed conflicts, and what the United States can do to try to crackdown on the practice. VOA’s Deborah Tate reports from Capitol Hill.

Senator Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, opened the Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing saying rape as a weapon of war is nothing new. He noted that in World War II, the Japanese Imperial Army raped an estimated 20,000 females, ranging from infants to the elderly, in the city of Nanking, China, in a one-month period.

He said little has changed since then.

“Mass rape has been a feature common to recent conflicts in Bosnia, Darfur, the Democratic Republic of Congo, East Timor, Rwanda and Sierra Leone,” said Durbin. “It is not new or unique to these conflicts.”

Durbin praised Yugoslav and Rwandan war crime tribunals for prosecuting perpetrators of sexual violence.

But he said despite such developments, wartime sexual violence and the victims who survive it remain invisible far too often.

Doctor Denis Mukwege has seen the effects of rape in war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo. He is a gynecologist at Panzi Hospital in Bukavu in South Kivu province.

“Generally, the victims are raped by several men at a time, one after another, in public, in front of parents, husbands, children or neighbors,” he said. “Rape is followed by mutilations, or other corporal torture.”

Doctor Mukwege said the victims often complain of physical, psychological and social problems, and can have sexually-transmissible infections, including HIV.

He said these women and girls are often rejected by their own family. He said such exclusion and isolation can worsen behavioral problems and in some cases, lead to suicide.

Karin Wachter, a senior technical advisor with the International Rescue Committee, a nonprofit humanitarian agency, says the systematic use of rape in war has many purposes – including ethnic cleansing and the domination of target populations.

“This form of warfare is tragically effective,” said Wachter. “It destroys the fabric of a community in a way that few weapons can. It produces unwanted children, it spreads disease, and it leaves an imprint on the individual and collective psyche that is difficult to erase.”

Wachter urged lawmakers support proposed legislation known as the International Violence Against Women Act, which makes violence against women a key priority in U.S. foreign assistance programs. The bill is sponsored by Senator Joe Biden, a Delaware Democrat and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, the top Republican on that committee.

Kelly Dawn Askin, senior legal officer for the Open Society Justice Initiative, called on Congress to strengthen U.S. laws to give more protections to victims of sex crimes and ensure that those responsible of such crimes neither escape justice nor find safe haven in the United States.

But Askin said more should also be done to try to change the culture that she suggested allows rape in wartime to continue.

“In addition to the physical, psychological and sexual harm inflicted by rapes, sex crime survivors often face severe ostracism, HIV-AIDS, or other sexually-transmitted disease, and serious reproductive harms,” she said. “If the shame is placed on the perpetrators for their despicable acts, instead of on the victims, I am confident we would see a reduction in the occurrence of sex crimes.”

Senator Durbin vowed to work with his congressional colleagues to ensure that U.S. laws hold accountable those who use rape as a weapon of war.

The defense and prosecution teams, each made up of three lawyers, as well as the judge and support staff, will spend about two months in Rwanda and neighboring Tanzania to hear testimony of witnesses unable to travel to Canada.

The entire bill of the brief relocation, will be picked up by Canadian taxpayers, as it was when the team spent two weeks in France in January. The rough tally for that trip was $522,000, not including salaries.

Mr. Mutangana Jean Bosco, Rwanda Prosecution Department Spokesman confirmed the move.

“The coming of the Court to Rwanda is nothing out of the ordinary but simply indicative of the good working relationship we (government) have with the court that is trying the Rwandan suspected of Genocide”, said Mutangana.

The Crown carried out a similar exercise last year in Rwanda. The suspect Mr. Désiré Munyaneza will not be part of the trip like it was in the previous visit.

Defense lawyer Richard Perras, expects to call 14 witnesses to complement the testimony already heard in Quebec Superior Court in Montreal.

The trial, which entered its second year last week, is a first in Canada. The 41-year-old failed refugee claimant was arrested in Toronto in 2005 and charged under Canada’s 8-year-old Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act.

Munyaneza was a known political extremist even before April 1994. He formed close working relationships with top military officers and local government officials in charge of the Genocide in Butare (now part of the Southern Province).

It is alleged that Mr. Munyaneza distinguished himself, by virtue of his energy and dedication to the policy of massacres, and the efficiency of his operations.

It is also alleged that one of Munyaneza’s responsibilities was the surveillance of a network of roadblocks established throughout the town of Butare, manned by militiamen wielding machetes, axes, nail-studded clubs and other instruments. Tutsi were either killed on the spot, or taken away and assassinated elsewhere

The survivors of the carnage allege that the former top businessman, who was running the main general store when the massacres started, played a very significant role in rape and sexual violence.

Some witnesses that have testified at the trial in Canada, have narrated gruesome cases of rape by Mr. Munyaneza himself, as well as encouraging militias under his command to do the same.

Mr. Munyaneza is also blamed by witnesses and survivors for abducting, together with soldiers, Tutsi from the University Hospital in Butare.

If found guilty, according to the Canadian war crimes law, he would receive a life sentence, which he’d serve here.

Munyaneza, who has been kept in isolation at the Rivières des Prairies detention center since being beaten last year by a fellow inmate, will not travel with his defence team to Rwanda. No date has been set for the trial to resume in Montreal.

Five of war-torn Rwanda’s most wanted are believed to be hiding in Canada. Extradition requests have been sent to Canada for suspects alleged to be connected to the country’s 1994 genocide, in which up to a million Rwandans were killed.

Leon Mugesera www.terroritory.com/category/regimes/most-wanted-north-america/

Evariste Bicamumpa www.terroritory.com/2008/02/07/wantedevariste-bicamumpaka/

Gaspard Ruhumuliza

Vincent Ndamage

Pierre Celestin Halindintwali

Wikileaks.org, as it is known, was cut off from the internet following a California court ruling, the site says.

The case was brought by a Swiss bank after “several hundred” documents were posted about its offshore activities.

Other versions of the pages, hosted in countries such as Belgium and India, can still be accessed.

However, the main site was taken off line after the court ordered that Dynadot, which controls the site’s domain name, should remove all traces of wikileaks from its servers.

The court also ordered that Dynadot should “prevent the domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org website or any other website or server other than a blank park page, until further order of this Court.”

Other orders included that the domain name be locked “to prevent transfer of the domain name to a different domain registrar” to prevent changes being made to the site.

Wikileaks claimed that the order was “unconstitutional” and said that the site had been “forcibly censored”.

Web names

The case was brought by lawyers working for the Swiss banking group Julius Baer. It concerned several documents posted on the site which allegedly reveal that the bank was involved with money laundering and tax evasion.

The documents were allegedly posted by Rudolf Elmer, former vice president of the bank’s Cayman Island’s operation.

A spokesperson for Julius Baer said he could not comment on the case because of “pending legal proceedings”.

The BBC understands that Julius Baer asked for the documents to be removed because they could have an impact on a separate legal case ongoing in Switzerland.

The court hearing took place last week and Dynadot blocked access from Friday evening.

Wikileaks says it was not represented at the hearing because it was “given only hours notice” via e-mail.

A document signed by Judge Jeffery White, who presided over the case, ordered Dynadot to follow six court orders.

As well as removing all records of the site form its servers, the hosting and domain name firm was ordered to produce “all prior or previous administrative and account records and data for the wikileaks.org domain name and account”.

The order also demanded that details of the site’s registrant, contacts, payment records and “IP addresses and associated data used by any person…who accessed the account for the domain name” to be handed over.

Wikileaks allows users to post documents anonymously.

Information bank

The site was founded in 2006 by dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and technologists from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa.

It so far claims to have published more than 1.2 million documents.

It provoked controversy when it first appeared on the net with many commentators questioning the motives of the people behind the site.

It recently made available a confidential briefing document relating to the collapse of the UK’s Northern Rock bank.

Lawyers working on behalf of the bank attempted to have the documents removed from the site. They can still be accessed.

Dynadot was contacted for this article but have so far not responded to requests for comment.