October 07, 1999
Sofia, Oct 7 (Tanjug) - Kosmet Albanian Iso Balak (30) from Pristina who is in possession of the Yugoslav passport, refuses to tell to Bulgarian police where and to whom he was carrying 102 kg of heroin, worth about 10 million D-marks on the black market. This quantity was discovered by the Bulgarian customs officers at Kapetan Andreevo border crossing with Turkey on October 2.
This is another successful action of Bulgarian customs officers in which they captured large quantity of heroin and cut another channel which goes via Pristina, Tetovo and Tirana to the West and USA.
It is assumed that the Albanian Mafia have been drugs trafficking across the Macedonian and Albanian borders which remained unprotected after withdrawal of the Yugoslav armed forces.
Balak is already known to Bulgarian customs officers since he has been travelling to Turkey many times before. The customs officers tried to hand him over a ticket for the offence he had made before but he tried to escape. However, the police was faster and found three boxes with 200 bags of heroin in his car.
Sofia newspapers remind that in July, customs officers had already discovered and captured 50 kg of heroin with the Albanians from Tetovo. This quantity was also on its way to western Europe.
These two examples were not sufficiently strong proofs
for the U.N. and E.U. officials and European Council in
Pristina that the Albanian Mafia is continuing its
dangerous operation of drugs trafficking right before the
eyes of Kfor and U.N. civilian mission. Of course, this
is all being done for financing KLA and so-called "Kosovo
Protection Corps".
