PACE winter session opens in Strasbourg
The much-publicized report of Dick Marty from Switzerland, head of the Monitoring Committee, which is entitled "Inhuman treatment of people and illicit trafficking in human organs in Kosovo", will be the key topic for discussion. "The dossier has been opened on the initiative of the Russian delegation," said Konstantin Kosachev, who is leading the Russian delegation, Kazinform cites Itar-Tass.
The report of a group of PACE experts, headed by Dick Marty, a popular Swiss human rights champion, which was published in December 2010, said that during the combat operations in Kosovo, kidnappings and murder of peaceful civilians were practiced under the direct control of commanders of the so-called "Kosovo liberation army" (KLA) for the purpose of the extraction of human organs and their subsequent sale. Hashim Thaci, now prime minister of Kosovo, was one of the leaders of KLA.
The PACE Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights has suggested the adoption of a resolution on Dick Marty's report, urging to conduct investigation on the national and international levels of the facts of the disappearance of people, corruption and collusion between organised crime and the political circles of Kosovo.
Aside from it, PACE will discuss the problem of the reforming of the Council of Europe within the framework of a separate report of the Political Affairs Committee, as well as the fulfilment of resolutions of the European Human Rights Court and the abolition of capital punishment.
The agenda of the session includes discussions within the framework of the urgent and current debate on the situation in Belarus after the recent presidential elections, the persecution of Christians in Muslim countries, the adoption of the law on mass media in Hungary, which is "discriminatory" from the point of view of European values, as well as the coup in Tunisia.
PACE plans to end the session on Friday, January 28.
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