An EU-led court in Kosovo on Monday sentenced five doctors to up to eight years in prison for illegal organ harvesting and transplants.
Former Kosovo health minister Ilir Rrecaj — who admitted during the trial that he knew that illegal kidney transplants were carried out at the Medicus clinic in Pristina in 2008, but denied covering them up — was acquitted.
Prominent Pristina urologist Lutfi Dervishi got the stiffest term of eight years for “organised crime and human trafficking,” the judge said in the verdict.
His son Arban Dervishi was sentenced to seven years and three months while the other three defendants received between one and three years imprisonment.
The indictment says that at least 30 illegal kidney removals and transplants were carried out at the clinic in the Kosovo capital in 2008.