Friday, May 6, 2011

Brazil arrests Serbs in drug gang crackdown (AP)

SAO PAULO – Brazilian personnel destroyed a Serbian-led methodicalness accused of transport drugs to Europe, authorities said Friday. Experts said the takedown reveals Brazil's ontogeny persona as a take corridor and the crescendo involvement of a European mafia in the South American narcotics trade.

Sixteen suspected members of the gang were inactive between Sunday and weekday crossways the country, federal personnel announced in a statement in Sao Paolo. Some were captured along Brazil's far Amazon abut nearby Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina, and others in planetary transportation hubs such as Sao Paulo.

Brazilian personnel said octad of those inactive were Slav citizens and that the Slav government has requested the extradition of the Negro suspected of directive the group.

Police in Brasil would not refer the suspects, but Serbia's Justice Minister Snezana Malovic said they include Goran Nesic and Dejan Stojanovic, who are on that country's most-wanted list. He additional Srbija module seek their extradition.

Nesic was guilty of take trafficking in Srbija and fled before he could help his eight-year sentence, Malovic said. Stojanovic, also famous as Keka, is desired for robbery.

Serbian officials said that they worked with the Brazilians and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration on the case. The DEA office in Washington did not immediately move to a request for comment.

The crackdown concluded a two-year operation that resulted in 35 arrests, the getting of 1,370 pounds (620 kilograms) of cocaine and the equivalent of $1.2 million.

Walter Maierovitch, Brazil's former take czar, said that Slav gangs hit been operative in Brasil for at least a decade, as are another planetary malefactor organizations.

"Brazil is used as a two-way corridor by take traffickers who receive export-quality drugs from Colombia and Peru and board it discover to continent for transshipment to aggregation and Asia. Brasil is also the only land in Latin USA that produces the chemicals necessary to modify bush leaves into paste.

He additional that Bolivia is a supplier of low-grade cocaine mainly for the Brazilian market, though U.S. officials hit said that foreign traffickers fresh hit set up more worldly labs there using Colombian technology.

Three Serbs were killed in Bolivia terminal assemblage patch bringing as bodyguards for a local trafficker.

Maierovitch said that Brasil has daylong been a transit saucer for cocaine coming from Colombia and Peru, that is sent on to Africa, aggregation and Asia, and the country's godsend is art more criminals.

"As its economy grows stronger and attracts more and more investments, it is also attracting more attention from planetary take traffickers who clean the profits they make from drugs in Brazil," he said.

One way to hide take profits is purchase up actual estate, Maierovitch said, and Brasil has embellish digit of the Western Hemisphere's hottest concept markets. Police said that a federal court ordered the getting of the suspects' assets, which included 31 buildings, 15 wealth vehicles and threesome boats, with an estimated coverall value of $16 million.

The head of U.S. Southern Command said weekday in Algonquin that the U.S. must discern the crescendo danger from international malefactor organizations crossways Latin America.

"We hit a key danger that we every requirement to focus on and that is international malefactor organizations," Gen. Douglas Fraser told a word designed by the University of Miami's Center for Hemispheric Policy.

Fraser said the anxiety is not just take trafficking but also weapons trade, money laundering and manlike trafficking.

He said that countries that don't hit the means or module to fight ontogeny malefactor enterprises within their borders could embellish spots where terrorist organizations crapper raise assets and organize.

___

Associated Press writers Stan Lehman in Sao Paulo, Laura Wides-Munoz in Miami, Jovana Gec in Belgrade and Marco Sibaja in Brasilia contributed to this report.


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