PAGE 6
TUESDAY, APRIL 30, 2013
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAM
INTERNATIONAL
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kosovo Albanian doctor Lufi Dervisi, center, flanked by defense councils, sits in a court room in Pristina, Kosovo, yesterday. A Kosovo court has found two ethnic Albanians guilty of human trafficking and organized crime in a highly publicized trial against seven people suspected of running an international organ trafficking ring. A panel of two European Union and one Kosovo judges sentenced Lufi Dervisi to eight years in prison and his son Arban Dervishi to seven years and three months in prison for extracting kidneys from poor donors who were lured by financial promises.
Illegal organ trafficking ring exposed
ASSOCIATED PRESS
PRISTINA, Kosovo — A court in Kosovo found two citizens guilty of human trafficking and organized crime Monday in a major trial against seven people suspected of running an international organ trafficking ring that took kidneys from poor donors lured by financial promises.
A panel of two European Union judges and one Kosovo judge sentenced urologist Lutfi Dervishi to eight years in prison and his son Arban Dervisi to seven years and three months. Both also received fines, while Lutfi Dervishi was barred from practicing urology for two years.
A third defendant, Sokol Hajdini, was sentenced to three years in jail for causing grievous bodily harm. Two others received suspended sentences, while two were freed. The defendants can appeal the
verdicts and they are not kept in custody
Organ transplantation is illegal in Kosovo's private clinics. It is also rare in public health facilities because of poor conditions.
The trial began in December 2011 and included more than 100 witnesses. All the donors and recipients were foreign nationals.
Seven donors who testified were from Israel, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhtan, Belarus and Turkey. They described how they were flown into Kosovo from Istanbul and quickly wheeled into surgery in a medical facility named "Medicus" on the outskirts of Kosovo's capital, Pristina.
The victims were promised $10,000 to $12,000 in return for their kidneys, but many said they were never paid.
The donors' kidneys were removed for transplantation into people who paid up to 130,000
euros for the procedure. The recipients were mostly wealthy patients from places such as Israel, Poland, Canada, the U.S. and Germany.
The court ordered that Lufi and Arban Dervishi pay partial compensation of 15,000 euros to each of the seven victims who testified during the proceedings. The victims may later seek additional compensation in court, the panel said in its reasoning.
At least 24 kidney transplants, involving 48 donors and recipients, were carried out between 2008 and 2009, the period the case covered.
The donors "were alone, did not speak the language, uncertain of what they were doing and had no one to protect their interest," the court's reasoning read. "Some donors had severe second thoughts at the clinic, but were given no opportunity to back out and were psychologically pressured into going forward with the surgery."
Most of the names of donors and recipients were traced through documents seized during a police raid into the clinic in 2008 acting to verify a statement by a Turkish man that his kidney was removed. The man caught police's attention when he collapsed at the Pristina airport.
"In every sense this was the cruel harvest of the poor and weak in our society," Jonathan Ratel, a Canadian prosecutor who brought the charges as part of European Union's rule of law mission in Kosovo, said after the verdicts.
The defendants are believed to have profited $1 million from the transplants.
He alleged that the sole motive of the defendants was "obscene profit and human greed." But the defendants claimed they were not guilty, arguing that the donors came to Kosovo voluntarily and that the surgeries saved lives.
ENTERTAINMENT
Trebek addresses rumors of retiring from 'Jeopardy'
MCCLATCHY TRIBUNE
But don't say that to Alex Trebek.
LOSANGeles — Speculation has been swirling recently that when Alex Trebek's contract is up in 2016, the long-running host of "Jeopardy" will finally retire.
"Everybody's speculating on my retirement and I don't know why," Trebek told the Los Angeles Times. "It's silly. Somebody asked me if I give any thoughts to retiring. Well, yes, I've given thoughts to retiring, for crying out loud. I've been doing the show for 29 years. Why wouldn't I think about retiring? Everybody assumes from my having said that, that he's retiring. Well, no, I've been thinking about it. So allow me to talk about it."
Reports recently speculated that Trebek would be stepping down at the end of the 2015-2016 season, when the host will be 76 years old. But according to Trebek, who is just 72 now, he's still enjoying the job and won't decide to quit until he feels he can't do it anymore. And when that time comes, don't expect much of a heads-up.
"It'll probably happen very quickly," he said. "There won't
be any fanfare. It'll be like the time I shaved my mustache on a whim. I'll just ask the director to leave me 20 or 30 seconds at the end of the program to say a few words and I'll say a few words and thank people and be on my way."
Trebek professes to be completely uninterested in the kind of long goodbyes that Johnny Carson or Regis Philbin had when they stepped down.
"This isn't the Alex Trebek farewell tour," he said. "It's no big deal."
As for who would or should replace him? Though Matt Lauer and Anderson Cooper have been mentioned as possible replacements, Trebek is keeping out of it.
"It could be anybody," he said.
"Could be a woman. I don't concern myself with that because that is not a decision I will be involved in."
However, he isn't completely dismissive of his three decades on the air or how synonymous he has become with the "jeopardy" brand.
"I hope I'll be hard to replace. That would be a good thing for my legacy. But anybody can be replaced. I can be replaced."
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