Free Republic

Two men have been charged with espionage for allegedly feeding classified German government information to organized crime and foreign intelligence contacts in Macedonia and Kosovo, federal prosecutors said Thursday. Anton Robert K., a 42-year-old German, allegedly passed along information while working at the German diplomatic mission in the Kosovo capital Pristina to Murat A., a 28-year-old Macedonian with ties to organized crime and "foreign intelligence," prosecutors said in a statement. Both men, whose full names were not given, were arrested earlier this month in the Stuttgart area and indicted on the charges Tuesday before a federal judge, prosecutors said. Anton...

Kosovska Mitrovica, Kosovo - In Kosovo, the gulf between majority Albanians and minority Serbs is nowhere more visible than in the divided town of Kosovska Mitrovica. But that hasn't stopped the town from being a magnet for criminals of all backgrounds willing to work together for an illicit buck. Kosovska Mitrovica, 50 kilometres north-west of the Kosovo's capital Pristina, is a no-holds-barred frontier town without proper police or courts. It is split in half by the ethnic division that sheared Kosovo away from its Serbian past earlier this year - the part of the town north of the Ibar river...

Three armed men, believed to be Albanians, burst into a cafe in the central Athens district of Aghios Panteleimonas late on Wednesday night and shot dead three customers in what police believe was a settling of accounts between rival protection gangs in the area. According to police, two of the three victims were probably killed by mistake. A 38-year Albanian was the target of the attack. A second Albanian, aged 26, and a Romanian, aged 37, were probably killed accidentally, according to police who found 35 cartridge cases at the scene. The assailants entered the cafe at about 10.30 p.m.,...

PRISTINA, Kosovo-A NATO peacekeeper caught in a shootout in western Kosovo is being treated for slight injuries. NATO officials say a stray bullet hit the soldier in the leg Wednesday when two rival groups opened fire at each other in the town of Prizren, 80 kilometers west of the capital Pristina (50 miles). The soldier, who is not being named, sustained slight injuries to the leg but is able to walk. Three people died in the shootout that took place in the center of the town. Authorities believe it was a conflict between two ethnic Albanian criminal gangs. NATO has...

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/thomas100806.htm Paedophiles, Cheb sex capital of Europe Captive market, "Girls who've shown signs of disobedience have had their feet cemented into washbasins before being dumped in the Aegean Sea. Others have been horrifically tortured. The Albanian gangs have a seemingly endless supply of women, and their power extends way beyond their homeland to the underworlds of Italy and parts of New York. The victims do not officially exist and are powerless to resist." Most Albanian gangsters are men in their twenties from the backward north of the country. Rather than being based around individual gangland bosses, they are organized in...

PRISTINA, Serbia: A “state of emergency” was proclaimed in Serb enclaves in northern Kosovo on Monday as the embattled minority cut relations with the UN mission (UNMIK) over a wave of ethnic violence. “The state of emergency is proclaimed from today on the territory of four municipalities in northern Kosovo,” said Dragisa Milovic, an ethnic-Serb official in the town of Zvecan. “All contacts with Kosovo institutions, in particular with UNMIK, are now being cut off, until those who have committed numerous crimes against the Serbs are caught.” Several thousand Serbs gathered in Zvecan to protest the violence, allegedly committed by...

Among the most important priorities of U.S. global policy is combating the international traffic in drugs and in persons (often a euphemism for women and children forced into prostitution). Because of the linkage and overlap among terrorist networks and organized criminal gangs, the battle against trafficking is also an integral part of the war on terror. Fighting organized criminal activities is difficult even in countries with a functioning legal system, honest police and the rule of law. Think how much harder that would be when dealing with an independent country where the authorities are an integral part of the criminal...

Text of report by "E.B." entitled "Serbian drug barons are big players in Europe" published by Serbian newspaper Blic on 27 March Belgrade: Serbian drug barons, who maintain strong ties with cocaine traders in Colombia, the world's biggest producer of this narcotic, have strong business contacts also with the Albanian mafia, police information indicates. These good contacts on both sides of the Atlantic and highly functional trafficking routes, whereby tons of cocaine are smuggled from South America to Europe, have enabled them to take a place among the most powerful drugs traffickers in Europe. People have only recently become aware...

TERRORIST RAMUSH HARADINAJ NEW PRIME MINISTER OF KOSOVO AND METOHIJA

The feds have a new organized-crime target: the Albanian Mafia. Federal prosecutors issued racketeering charges against 22 people associated with an immigrant Albanian crime family called the Rudaj Organization. A massive indictment handed up in Manhattan federal court includes charges of attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, extortion, loan-sharking, debt collecting and illegal gambling operations through a network of gambling parlors in The Bronx, Westchester and Queens.

AN ALBANIAN boy aged 14 - forced to flee his country after gangsters killed his family - has arrived on his own in Huddersfield. Nikoll Gjoka's tortuous journey to the UK was forced on him after his family were brutally killed. In November last year, his father, mother and elder sister were murdered in their own home by members of the Albanian mafia. Their crime? Nikoll's father had been a good policeman. Pam Bye, Nikoll's legal guardian and director of Kirklees Refugees and Friends Together (Kraft), said: "In a country wormed with corruption, from the government down, his father had...