EULEX has named John Clint Williamson as the lead prosecutor of a task force that will investigate claims made by Council of Europe investigator Dick Marty last year, the mission said in a statement.
Williamson, 50, currently serves as a Special Expert to the Secretary-General of the United Nations and in the past has worked as the U.S. State Department’s Special Representative for War Crimes.
He has previous experience in the Balkans. From 1994-2001, Williamson was a trial attorney at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), where he worked on cases against former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and paramilitary leader Zeljko “Arkan” Raznatovic.
In 2001, he became the head of the Department of Justice at the UN Interim Administration in Kosovo.
The team led by Williamson will be based in Pristina and Brussels, and will receive help from agencies in Tirana and Belgrade, according to EULEX spokesman Nicholas Hawton.
Since allegations of organ trafficking by the Kosovo Liberation Army broke in Marty’s report last December, Serbia has repeatedly demanded that an independent investigative body review the allegations. The announcement of Williamson’s appointment corresponds with a meeting of the UN Security Council scheduled for August 29, where the topic is to come under review.
In his report, Marty, the EU human rights rapporteur, alleged that during the war Thaci led a string of detention centers along Albania’s northern border with Kosovo, where he executed civilian captives, then extracted their organs and sold them on the black market.
Thaci has vehemently denied the charges levied against him.
