Orban Downplays Role in Azerbaijan Case while Medvedev Says Free Pussy Riot

Plus, a witness describes gruesome organ harvesting in the Balkans and gas starts to flow between Uzbekistan and China. by Jeremy Druker, Ioana Caloianu, and Nino Tsintsadze 13 September 2012 1. Hungary’s Orban denies special role in Azerbaijani decision

 

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has downplayed his role in the controversial repatriation of a convicted Azerbaijani murderer, Reuters reports. After years of lobbying by Azerbaijan, Hungary sent Ramil Safarov back to Baku on 31 August, where he was immediately pardoned by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev. Safarov had been serving a life sentence for the 2004 ax murder of Armenian soldier Gurgen Margarian while both were attending a NATO training course in Budapest. Many greeted Safarov as a hero upon his return, inflaming tensions with Armenia.

 

During an 11 September press conference, Orban said the “entire” government had coordinated the decision. "Each ministry presented its opinion, the justice ministry about the legal side and the foreign ministry about the diplomatic consequences,” he said, adding that he had simply announced the decision according to general procedure, according to Reuters.  

 

Orban was responding to reports, first published on the Origo.hu news website, that he admitted last week in a Fidesz closed party meeting that he had personally pushed for the extradition even though he knew Safarov would be released. Citing anonymous sources close to the government and Fidesz, Origo reported that Orban had overridden the warnings of other Fidesz members and his advisers, hoping for future economic assistance from Azerbaijan. The website also wrote that Orban expected “trouble” but thought it would come later, believing months would pass before Safarov would be pardoned for health reasons.

 

During the 11 September press conference, however, Orban said the Foreign Ministry had forecast “precisely” what might occur following the repatriation. “Nothing happened after our decision that we would not have reckoned with in advance," he said.

 

Armenia has suspended diplomatic relations with Hungary over the repatriation and sent a letter protesting the pardon to France, Russia, and the United States, co-chairs of the so-called Minsk Group of countries leading peace talks between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

 

2. Russian prime minister favors release of Pussy Riot

 

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has spoken out in favor of the release from prison of the three members of Pussy Riot, the Guardian reports. Medvedev appeared on Russian television 12 September and said he was “sickened by what [the members of Pussy Riot] did, by their looks, by the hysteria that followed what had happened.” However, the prime minister said the months spent in custody since their arrest in early March were a “very serious punishment regardless of the sentence” and that a suspended sentence would therefore be “entirely sufficient.”

 

The supporters of the imprisoned band members, sentenced to two years in jail for anti-religious hooliganism on 17 August, are skeptical about the motivation and potential impact of Medvedev’s remarks. The prime minister, who served as president before Vladimir Putin returned to that position, has long been accused of playing the “good cop” to Putin’s bad cop to curry favor with liberals, but doing next to nothing to democratize Russia. 

 

Nikolai Polozov, a lawyer for Pussy Riot, labeled Medvedev’s comments an “attempt to save face” and doubts that the prime minister’s voice would be heard in the context of all the “awful propaganda” against his clients. A state-run television channel, for example, ran a broadcast on the evening of 11 September describing the members of Pussy Riot as doing the devil's work, with their actions supposedly orchestrated by the London-based oligarch and Putin opponent Boris Berezovsky, the Guardian reports.

 

3. Major development in Balkan organ-trafficking allegations

 

A former Kosovan rebel has described a heart removal operation that he performed for the black market in organs during the conflict over Kosovo, according to The Telegraph. On 9 September, Serbian war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic told the AFP news agency that a witness testified about procedures “done in northern Albania that consisted of harvesting organs from Serbs kidnapped during the 1998-99 conflict in Kosovo.”

 

A day later, the anonymous witness appeared on the Serbian RTS government-owned television channel to describe how he removed the heart of a Serbian prisoner in the northern Albanian town of Kukes. He said he was trained by “doctors” several days before the surgery and that two doctors present at the scene, a school classroom, gave him instructions throughout the procedure. The still-beating heart was placed afterward in a cooling box that was taken to the Tirana airport and handed to a foreigner, who came on a “small private plane” with a Turkish flag.

 

Allegations have long circulated that members of the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army had engaged in organ harvesting during and after the Kosovo conflict. In 2010, the Council of Europe's human rights rapporteur released a report that concluded that former KLA commanders, including current Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, were involved in illegal organ trafficking from their mostly Serb prisoners. Thaci and Albanian authorities have denied the charges and the current claims of the anonymous witness.

 

A U.S. prosecutor appointed by the European Union is investigating the claims, and his office will consider whether the new testimony is relevant, Balkan Insight reports. 

 

An excerpt from the memoir of former Yugoslav war-crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte, published in 2008, describes investigations into similar illegal organ trafficking allegations that were stalled due to a lack of conclusive evidence.  

4. After delays, Uzbekistan exports gas to China

 

Uzbek gas has finally started to flow to China, Interfax-Ukraine reports, citing Uzbekistan's National Information Agency. In March, officials from the national oil and gas company, Uzbekneftegaz, had predicted gas would flow by April, but in May, with no gas yet flowing, daughter company Uztransgaz said some legal issues still needed to be resolved. A government source told Interfax-Ukraine that gas exports had started on a regular basis about a month ago, in mid-August.

 

The first agreement outlining the sale of natural gas to China was signed in 2010, with another deal inked in 2011 to set volumes and prices. Uzbekistan expects to transmit more than 5.4 billion cubic meters of gas by the end of 2012 and 25 billion cubic meters by 2016, NewKaz.ru reports. Two pipelines running between the two countries are already working at full capacity and a third should be operational by 2015.

 

News of the gas transmission is only the latest indication of the rapidly deepening relationship between Uzbekistan and China, which desperately needs to diversify energy sources for its expanding economy. A June EurasiaNet.org blog post reported that “Chinese investment has been pouring into the Uzbek economy at a brisk clip” and mentioned a commitment from the Chinese to invest $15 billion in oil and gas exploration in Uzbekistan. Chinese investments are also visible in transport, communications, agriculture, and energy security. Chinese investment is particularly welcome because Tashkent need not worry about criticism from Beijing on its human rights record, EurasiaNet.org notes.

 

5. Albanian weightlifting federation suspended after failed doping tests

 

Multiple cases of doping, including at the Olympics, have led to the suspension of Albania’s national weightlifting federation, Balkan Insight reports.

 

 

Nineteen-year-old Hysen Pulaku tested positive for an anabolic steroid, stanozolol, on 23 July and a few days later became the first athlete to be banned from competing at the London Olympics. According to The Telegraph, neither Pulaku nor his coach (also his uncle) denied the use of the steroid. They also did not challenge the finding. Earlier in the year, two other Albanian weightlifters failed doping tests, including Erkand Qerimaj, who was stripped of a gold medal he had won at the European Weightlifting Championships held in Turkey.

 

The International Weightlifting Federation judged the failed tests as serious enough to invoke a provisional suspension, but the IWF board will decide this weekend on the possibility of further punishment. According to Balkan Insight, the IWF could decide to extend the suspension or to fine the Albanian federation, or both.

 

Despite the Olympics scandal and the reputation for doping attached to many former communist countries, Pulaku’s failed test has been the only one for the country in the history of the summer games, as The Economist’s “chart of shame” illustrates.