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Drug Traffickers Rule Montenegro's Poor North

25 04 2007  In down-at-heel Berane, the hope of easy money and life in fast lane lures
many youths into a deadly trade.

By Tufik Softic in Berane

In the village of Dolac, near Berane, the rows of plush houses and new jeeps parked in the streets make it look more like a wealthy suburb in Western Europe than the outskirts of a dilapidated and impoverished Montenegrin town.

"Look at the house on the hill," said Mladen, a local man. "The girl living
there used to work for a 100 euro a month and now she's unemployed. But she drives a new jeep ever since her brother started sending her money from abroad."

Mladen doesn't specify the likely source of this mystery money but it's not
hard to work it out. Police in Berane believe almost two-thirds of the young men from the area live abroad in Europe and deal in drugs.

"Many are uneducated," said one police officer. "But when they come home
from Europe for a vacation they bring sacks of cash."

The officer did not want to be named for a reason; many of his colleagues
who had tried to tackle the problem had received serious threats.

He said many young dealers were now buying real estate in Berane and other parts of Montenegro to launder their profits. "Everybody knows that but they are clean when they come here and we can't touch them," the officer confided.

Dealing is sometimes a family affair. "Brothers sometimes take it turns to
deal in drugs abroad," concluded the same officer.

Berane has long been a transit point on the main international drugs routes.

Montenegro is part of a northern arc of a heroin route stretching from
Afghanistan through Turkey and Kosovo to Albania and Montenegro. From there, it is distributed to western countries.

Marko Nicovic, Belgrade-based head of an anti-drug police association, knows only too well that Montenegro is a key junction in the flow of narcotics.

He said Montenegro's strategic position and porous borders were tempting for the drugs cartels, "They have now started transiting cocaine from Latin America through this region in addition to heroin from the east."

Nicovic told Balkan Insight that the cartels shipped Colombian cocaine to
Montenegro's largest port at Bar, Durres in Albania and Rijeka in Croatia.

"It is easy to smuggle large shipments of drugs by sea, so no one was
surprised when up to 400 kilogrammes of cocaine was seized in a single raid,
as was the case in Montenegro a few months ago," added Nicovic.

The Berane police's statistics show that some of the narcotics destined for
other markets ends up in the town. This year, police started 25 court
proceedings against street dealers.

The high unemployment rate and the lack of many signs of economic prosperity in Montenegro are some of the reasons why young men in Berane are eager to join the drugs business.

"Without a clear economic vision, a rising number of young men are turning to organised crime," lamented Nicovic.

Most local inhabitants take no pride in police estimates that Berane is home to more drug dealers per capita than any other town in the country.

They are no longer surprised either that dealers have made their town famous across Europe for the wrong reasons. Local police have no reliable
information on how many Berane men are serving time in prisons worldwide but agree the number may be high.

"The international police are supposed to alert us as soon as they arrest
someone from these parts and most often they do but not always," said the police officer cited earlier.

"Many drug offenders from Berane are doing time in western countries. One guy from here served two-and-a-half years for cocaine in Brazil of all
places, which we found out about after the Brazilian police notified us,"
said the same officer.

Young men yearning for quick scores are not deterred even by long prison
terms. "They do their time and go back to the same business when they get out," he went on.

The Danish capital of Copenhagen is a popular destination for "tough guys" from Berane and other parts of Montenegro. A local anecdote has it that a Danish policeman once asked, "How big is this city of Berane if it is home to so many criminals and drug dealers?"

The latest incident to arouse international attention concerned Drasko
Vukovic, 29. An unemployed teacher from Berane, he was arrested in Denmark, charged with carrying a fake Croatian passport and possession of 38 kg of pure cocaine. It transpired that Vukovic had already served a two-year prison term in Luxembourg for a drug-related offence.

Vukovic did not have to wait long to be rescued from the Frederiksund
correctional centre in Denmark. Last month, his friends literally snatched
him in broad daylight in a raid that made Danish newspaper headlines.
Interpol has had no success in tracking him down.

Nicovic believes it is no accident the Berane's young dealers choose Denmark as their destination. "It is a wealthy Scandinavian country and drug traffickers always follow the money," he said.

Vuk Vulevic, 30, is another suspected Berane dealer with a Danish link. He
is now in custody in Montenegro on suspicion of involvement in the
assassination of Dusko Jovanovic, editor of the Podgorica daily Dan,
following his arrest by the Danish police in November 2002 as a suspect in
another shooting.

The police have no evidence to prove Vulovic's involvement in Jovanovic's
assassination but have found a way to keep him in detention on charges that he was also involved in drug trafficking.

While Vulovic was still at large, his friend from Berane, Vuksan Cemovic,
31, tried to smuggle 200 kg of cocaine into Serbia from Venezuela via Italy
and the port of Bar using a company allegedly owned by Vulovic as a front.
Cemovic collected the shipment in Bar and escorted it to the Serbian border but the Serbian and Montenegrin police were on the trail and now he and another colleague are behind bars.

According to the Italian police, the bulk of the 200 kg was seized in
Venezuela and only a small part was deliberately allowed to find its way to
Montenegro and the buyer. Italian police were then able to identify Cemovic as the alleged head of a drugs cartel.

The news shocked many residents of Berane who saw their old neighbour as an innocuous character. His case is being handled by the Montenegrin state prosecutor for organised crime.

The recent seizure in Bar of a 400 kg shipment of cocaine bound for Western Europe shows Cemovic's arrest has not deterred the drug traffickers from continuing to trade through Montenegro.

Closer ties between the republic's police and Interpol are starting to yield
results, reflected in increasingly frequent and successful raids. But young
men from Berane still choose this lucrative if risky business as a quick way
out of poverty.

"This is a major drug flow transit area," the police officer told Balkan
Insight. "Heroin and cocaine bring quick money and lots of it. They get
jeeps, fancy apartments, business premises and live in the fast lane. They
think they are flying until they go down."

Tufik Softic is the radio Berane director and the editor in-chief. Balkan Insight is BIRN`s online publication.

This article was published with the support of the British embassy in Belgrade and National Endowment for Democracy - NED, as part of BIRN's Minority Media Training and Reporting Project