Montenegro Sacks Police Director Over Officers’ Crime Ties
Source: Balkan Insight
Montenegro’s government on Thursday axed police director Zoran Brdjanin after a large-scale investigation into police links with the notorious Kavac drug gang.
The government appointed two new interim police directors, Nikola Terzic and Predrag Sukovic, who will be in charge of contact with the European police agency Europol.
Currently, Terzic is head of police in the coastal town of Budva while Sukovic is head of the Special Police Department in charge of cooperation with Special State Prosecution.
On March 22, the police force’s assistant director, Dejan Knezevic, was arrested on the orders of the Special State Prosecutor’s Office for allegedly setting up a criminal organization.
Outgoing Prime Minister Dritan Abazovic said the security sector should be purged of all personnel connected to organized criminal groups regardless of their rank.
“We cannot allow police to be led by management that has lost credibility or is not trusted by the Special State Prosecution or the National Security Agency. I do not question Brdjanin’s professional capacity but, as police director, he had to know about criminals within his units,” Abazovic said at the government session.
Interior Minister Filip Adzic said the current police management lost the trust of international partners. “This is the first step in large-scale reforms in police. We need trusted people in police units,” Adzic said.
On March 27, Brdjanin rejected Interior Minister Adzic’s request to resign, insisting that he didn’t violate any law.
According to the Law on Internal Affairs, the Interior Ministry can propose to the government that it sacks the police director if violations have been committed. The Police Director can also be sacked if parliament’s Security and Defense Council doesn’t vote for his annual report.
The National Security Council on March 28 asked for changes within the police directorate, urging the Special State Prosecution to continue an investigation.
Knezevic, the police director’s assistant, who was in charge of the fight against organized crime, was arrested as part of a large-scale investigation of police links with the Kavac gang, which has also led to 12 current and former police officers’ arrests and to warrants for the arrest of three others.
Knezevic and a senior police officer, Ljubo Milovic, were allegedly tied to the gang from the town of Kotor, providing official protection for their drug, arms and tobacco-smuggling operations.
The gang has been involved for years in a war with the rival Skaljari gang, also from Kotor. At least 50 people have been killed in Montenegro, Serbia, Austria and Greece in the feud.
Last July, Montenegro issued an international warrant for Milovic and one of the Kavac gang leaders, Radoje Zvicer, for creating criminal organizations and drug trafficking.
Milovic and Zvicer fled the country after media last May published a Europol report to the Montenegrin government that included transcripts of communications with the gang involving Milovic and National Security Agency officer Petar Lazovic using the Sky ECC secure application.
Meanwhile, on March 23, the media published photographs and SKY ECC app transcripts of police special unit officers and members of the Kavac drug gang. In the photos, special unit police officers are seen beating prisoners, putting guns in their mouths, suffocating them and torturing them with electric shocks.
The original article: belongs to Balkan Insight .
