Kosovo’s ruling Vetevendosje party has expelled one of its members following his drug trafficking arrest in Albania.
Pristina assembly member Besnik Mujeci was among five people arrested in Albania’s capital of Tirana. Two of those arrested were from Kosovo.
According to Albanian police, authorities seized 1,300 MDMA tablets, known as ecstasy, from the group. The total market value of the drugs amounts to some 400,000 euros.
“After receiving the information about the arrest of the assemblyman of the Municipality of Pristina from the ranks of our party, the Disciplinary Commission of the LVV immediately dealt with this case,” said Arlind Manxhuka, spokesman for the Vetevendosje Movement (LVV).
“As a result, the Disciplinary Commission of the Vetevendosje Movement at its meeting, decided to exclude member Besnik Mujeci from membership and all structures of the Vetevendosje Movement!” he continued.
Manxhuka described the drug trafficking arrest as “ reprehensible and illegal phenomena… absolutely intolerable.”
Tirana police officer Tonin Vocaj said the suspects had exploited summer tourist traffic to transport the drugs from Pristina to Tirana by bus.
“After the shipments arrived in Tirana, they were transported by rented cars in Tirana and to other cities, mainly coastal ones, and the exchange places were designated in public places with a lot of movement and flow of people,” said Vocaj.
“In order to reach agreements with distributors of synthetic drugs in Albania, the traffickers demanded advance payments, or even vehicles as a guarantee,” he continued.
Vetevendosje’s political opponents expressed alarm at Mujeci’s arrest, raising the point that the party named Mujeci as a board member in the Pristina Bus Station public enterprise in June. The municipality, led by the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), overturned the decision, but was ultimately overruled by the Vetevendosje-controlled Ministry of Public Administration.
“Today, when one of their [municipality] assembly members was arrested with 11,000 doses of narcotics worth around half a million euros as part of a network where the Pristina-Tirana bus lines constantly shipped narcotics, there is no way not to recall the insistence of the opposition in the capital, Vetevendosje Movement, to place the same assemblyman- exactly this one- as a shareholder in this station,” said LDK leader Lumir Abdixhiku.
Referring to a central heating enterprise and a public housing enterprise, he emphasised, “not Termokos [central heating enterprise], Prishtina Parking, NPB [public housing enterprise], Palace of Youth or any other company in the capital, but precisely the [Bus] Station, where the bus lines left from every day.”
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