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Serbia said Sunday it had a witness who allegedly took part in the harvesting of organs of Serb prisoners by Kosovo Albanian rebels in the late 1990s.

"We have a witness who testified about a medical procedure, done in northern Albania, that consisted of harvesting organs from Serbs kidnapped during the 1998-99 conflict in Kosovo," Serbia's war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic told AFP.

"He described a surgery harvesting a heart from a Serb prisoner at a location near (the northern Albanian town of) Kukes in the late 1990s," and transporting the organ to the Rinas airport near the capital Tirana, the prosecutor said.

The witness said the heart "was then sold on the black market," Mr. Vukcevic said, adding that the man "described the procedure in detail" and claimed he had personally taken part in it.

The claims are being investigated by the European Union.

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