Turkish consulate in Kosovo comes under attack

5 people held in connection to Molotov attack by unidentified assailants in Prizren city

 News Briefs

The Turkish consulate in Prizren city in Kosovo was attacked with Molotov cocktails by unidentified assailants early Monday morning, according to Kosovar authorities.

Prizren Chief Prosecutor Syle Hoxha said five suspects had been taken into custody for suspected links to the attack.

The attack had caused minor damage to the consulate’s building. No injuries were reported.

The Kosovar Foreign Ministry later condemned the attack.

"This is an irresponsible barbaric assault against a democratic and multinational country like Kosovo," the ministry said in a statement.

Kosovar Foreign Minister Enver Hoxhaj also contacted Turkey's Ambassador to Kosovo Kivilcim Kilic and highlighted that ties between the two countries remain excellent and no “barbaric” act could affect it, the statement added.

Kosovo is a former Serbian province with nearly 1.8 million people, over 90 percent of whom were Kosovar Albanians.

It declared independence on Feb. 17, 2008, and is recognized by over 100 countries, including the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany and Turkey.

Serbia, Russia and China are among countries that have not yet recognized Kosovo’s independence.

WB

Ilegal Balkan weapons in west still a 'major problem'

The flow of illegal weapons from the Balkans to the West with last years Paris attacks highlighting the severity of the arms trade

 News Desk

A year after rebel fighters used weapons manufactured in Serbia to gun down victims in Paris, Balkan countries are struggling to end the scourge of illegal arms trafficking.

The killers who opened fire at the Bataclan theatre, cafes and restaurants in the French capital last November used Yugoslav-era assault rifles produced by Serbia's Zastava Arms.

Months earlier the Kouachi brothers, behind the deadly assault on the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices, carried a rocket launcher from the Balkans, a region littered with weapons since its 1990s civil conflicts. 

According to a top French magistrate, Robert Gelli, Serbian citizens come up in nearly a third of international arms trafficking probes carried out in France.

"The weapons getting through to western Europe and the effects they have is still a major problem," said Ivan Zverzhanovski, who leads a United Nations Development Programme project in the Balkans to help combat illegal arms trafficking.

The international monitoring project Small Arms Survey said in late 2014 that an estimated 3.6 to 6.2 million firearms were in civilian possession in the Western Balkans, a region home to less than 25 million people.

In Serbia alone there are between 200,000 and 900,000 unregistered weapons, according to authorities, despite various amnesty campaigns launched since the assassination of reformist prime minister Zoran Djindjic in 2003. 

"It is a fact that in Bosnia there are weapons that are not under control and traffickers buy these weapons," Bosnian Security Minister Dragan Mektic told news portal Klix.ba recently, stressing that the problem existed across the region.

 Micro-trafficking 

 Zverzhanovski told AFP that, based on information from law enforcement agencies, a gun bought for 250 to 500 euros on the Balkan black market could sell for 3,000 to 5,000 euros in a country such as Sweden.

The weapons are rarely transported by the truck-load but a few at a time, in private cars or the countless buses that link the Balkans with Western Europe. 

Some are sent in pieces to be reassembled later and some are even sent by post, experts say. Smuggling on this micro-scale makes the problem difficult to tackle.

"Until now, no serious groups of arms traffickers have been dismantled in Bosnia," said Jasmin Ahic, an analyst from Sarajevo's faculty of criminology.

The arms have their roots in communist Yugoslavia, where large stockpiles were kept across the federation for use by civilian-staffed "territorial defence" units, designed to defend against a surprise foreign attack.

They ended up deployed in inter-ethnic civil war as the federation collapsed, while more weapons were smuggled into the region to build up armies in the face of international sanctions.

 'Turning point' 

 Such arms went untracked in the chaos of conflict until resurfacing again on the streets of Aachen, Stockholm or Paris, where 130 people were killed in the attacks on November 13, 2015.

"The Paris attacks were a turning point on many levels," said Zverzhanovski, referring to growing cooperation within the EU and between Balkan law enforcement agencies.

Serbian and French officials signed an accord in October to form joint teams to investigate arms smuggling, and Belgrade's prosecutor for organised crime Mladen Nenadic said "determination and clarity" were needed to tackle the problem.

In April, 5,000 police officers were mobilised in all former Yugoslav republics in a 48-hour Interpol-led operation -- but it resulted in the seizure of just 40 firearms and six kilogrammes of explosives, along with 22 arrests, according to Bosnian police.

According to Zverzhanovski, efforts are "still relatively ad hoc, case-based," and the EU needs to help to build Balkan police forces' capacity, along with plying political pressure on the region to deal with illegal possession.

"This is the moment to tackle it, before these countries come into the EU," he said, noting that Croatia's efforts on firearms dropped off significantly once it joined the bloc.

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Pro-Russian candidate wins Bulgaria presidency

Rumen Radev receives nearly 60 percent of vote, Tsetska Tsacheva gets 35 percent

 News Desk

Rumen Radev, the candidate of the main opposition Socialist Party won the second round of the presidential elections in Bulgaria on Sunday, exit polls showed.

The former Air Force commander and retired general won 58.1 percent of the vote, becoming president of the small Black Sea state. 

With the victory, opposition parties could try to force an early general election.

Radev has pledged to foster better relations with Russia and remove EU sanctions that were imposed for Moscow’s role in the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine.

"Democracy in the country won the status quo," Radev said while addressing the media.

"I will not forget any promise and I will fulfill them all," he added.

Parliament Speaker Tsetska Tsacheva garnered just 35.3 percent of the vote.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Boyko Borisov announced he would resign Nov. 16 at the first meeting of parliament.



While the country is a member of NATO and the EU but many in Bulgaria still have a favorable view of ties with traditional ally Russia.

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Kosovo holds suspects over Israel football attack plot

Kosovo-born Lavdrim Muhaxheri is the ISIS-affiliated terrorist commander who planned attacks on Israeli soccer players

 News Desk

A Kosovo court on Friday ordered seven people suspected of plotting terrorist attacks to be detained for a month, officials said, as media reports said they planned to attack a weekend football match involving Israel.

The order follows a series of arrests in Kosovo and neighbouring Albania and Macedonia in which a total of 15 suspected extremists have been detained.

The seven belonged to one network that notably planned to attack a stadium in the northern Albanian town of Shkodra during the country's 2018 World Cup qualifier against Israel on Saturday, media reported.

The match will now be held in the central town of Elbasan for "security reasons." 

Earlier this week Israel said ISIL had been planning attacks in the Balkans and specifically warned its citizens not to attend the upcoming Israel-Albania football match.

The local Kosovo tribunal did not elaborate Friday on when and how the suspects were arrested.

Those detained also planned attacks in Kosovo "against international and other security institutions," a tribunal statement said.

They were plotting "terrorist attacks" with their counterparts from Albania and Macedonia against the same targets in the two countries. 

Earlier this month Albanian police detained four people on suspicion of financing terrorism, recruiting IS fighters for Syria and spreading "terrorist propaganda".

Macedonian officials said Thursday that two citizens were arrested during a regional police operation against suspected Islamic extremists.

The network in Kosovo consists of around 30 members and is a branch of a wider group in Albania and Macedonia, media reports said, adding that other members remained at large.

Albanian martyrs of Communist era to be beatified

Vatican officials will join the Balkan country's small Catholic community on Saturday to remember their martyrs at a cathedral mass in the northwestern city of Shkodra, whose cemetery was the scene of executions.

News Desk

They were tortured to death, fatally strung up by their feet, shot or thrown into quicksand.

Now, more than 30 years after their deaths, 38 Albanian Catholics killed under the isolated Communist regime of dictator Enver Hoxha are to be beatified -- a step on the path to sainthood.

"Faith in Christ was our only glimmer of hope in the life of Communist hell," said Father Ernest Simoni, who spent nearly two decades doing forced labour in prison and in the fields.

The 88-year-old clergyman will on November 19 become only the second Albanian to become a cardinal.

Initially condemned to death for celebrating a mass in memory of slain US president John F. Kennedy, he instead was forced to toil and eventually escaped the brutal repression during prisoner unrest in 1973.

Two-thirds of his sentence was spent in pyrite mines in the deserted Albanian mountains, more than 100 kilometres (60 miles) north of Tirana.

- 'A land of martyrs' -

The bodies of hundreds who went missing still lie in the underground passages around the notorious Spac labour camp.

Few Albanians at the time knew about the prison complex -- except that people who went there rarely returned.

"It brings to mind Dante's Circles of Hell, a gulag built for opponents of the Communist regime," historian Gjergj Marku told AFP.

If there was a Marxist motto that dictator Hoxha liked to repeat, it was that religion is the "opium of the people" and he tried to eradicate it from his country, officially declaring it an atheist state in 1967.

He engaged youth organisations to destroy 1,280 churches and mosques, which were sometimes transformed into sports or entertainment halls.

Seven bishops, 111 priests, 10 seminarists and eight nuns died in detention or were executed between 1945 and 1985, accused of having hidden arms to overthrow the regime, or of being spies or traitors.

"Albania was a land of martyrs," Pope Francis told a crowd of up to 300,000 when he visited Tirana in 2014.

- 'How is it possible?' -

In the Shkodra cathedral museum, 82-year-old priest Gjergj Simoni -- imprisoned for 10 years for writing a "Letter to Lucifer" meant for Hoxha -- recently told the story of the 38 believers who will be beatified.

There was Marie Tuci, a young woman tortured to death, and priest Pjeter Cuni, who did not survive being hung up by his feet.

Another priest, Leke Sirdani, was thrown alive into a cesspool, while Josif Papamihaili was swallowed by a quicksand swamp in eastern Albania.

Two German priests are among the martyrs and one Italian, Giovanni Faustini, who was shot aged 47.

"How is it possible that a man could invent such tortures to humiliate people who refused to surrender and never betrayed their faith?" wondered Angelo Massafra, the archbishop of Shkodra.

More than 30 years after the death of Hoxha in 1985, the dictator's dream of an atheist country has disappeared.

According to the national institute of statistics, 56.7 percent of Albania's three million people identify as Muslims, while more than 10 percent are Catholic and almost seven percent Orthodox.

Fewer than 14 percent refuse to answer the question of their religion.

Drane Malaj, 71, wiped her eyes as she recalled her uncle, a priest whose remains were found four decades after he was shot in Shkodra, and who will be beatified this weekend.

"He has a grave and will be recognised as a martyr in the name of God," she said.

Kosovo charges president's ally over land scam

It said the group was led by Syla, who surrendered to authorities in April two days after a major police probe and was placed under house arrest. 

News Desk

Kosovo's state prosecutor on Tuesday charged an ally of powerful President Hashim Thaci with leading a criminal network responsible for a multi-million euro land scam and money laundering.

Azem Syla, a former member of parliament and prominent politician in Thaci's ruling Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK), was charged along with 38 associates in the "organised criminal group," according to a statement from the prosecutor's office.

"They have collaborated with each other, each with a specific role, to deprive Kosovo of public property through criminal activities, including forged official documents, fraud and corrupt practices," the statement said.

After his arrest, the prosecutor said Syla's crime syndicate was involved in illegally acquiring public property in Kosovo worth 30 million euros ($33 million).

Syla, who subsequently quit his job an as MP, labelled the investigation "unfair".

The politician was a top commander in the independence-seeking Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which fought Serbian forces in the late 1990s, and a close associate of KLA political leader Thaci.

Kosovo unilaterally declared independence in 2008 and Thaci has since served seven years as prime minister, becoming president in April. 

Both Thaci and Syla were named in a 2011 Council of Europe report which said they were leading members of a mafia-style network involved in assassinations, unlawful detentions and even trafficking captives' organs during and after the war.

A special tribunal is being set up in The Hague to investigate and eventually prosecute the allegations in the explosive report. It is expected to be fully operational within the first half of 2017.

Thaci strongly denies the allegations against him.

Serbia claims EU pressure on Russia sanctions "unacceptable"

Serbia's top diplomat has complained that the European Union is putting "unacceptable" pressure on the country to impose sanctions against Russia.

News Desk

Serbia protested Wednesday against what it said was European Union pressure to impose sanctions against Russia, calling it "absolutely unacceptable."

Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic said in a statement that "pressures on Serbia to, diplomatically speaking, align its foreign policy with the EU... to impose sanctions against Russia, are absolutely unacceptable." 

EU's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini presented on Monday the 28-member block's 2016 common foreign and security policy report that said Brussels "will continue to call on Serbia to progressively align with the EU Common Foreign and Security policy."

Although Serbia has opened negotiations to join the EU, it remains Moscow's closest ally in the Balkans and has refused to join Brussels-imposed sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine crisis.

"Serbia wants to join EU, but it will never do anything against its national interests... We want good relations with everyone but we should not work against our own" interest, Dacic, also Deputy Prime Minister, said in the statement.

He indirectly confirmed local media reports that Serbia was also joining Russia in sending humanitarian aid to Syria, saying "we will send aid to Syria if someone else proposes it to us as well."

Cable television network N1 reported earlier Wednesday that Serbia would join countries such are Belorussia, China, India, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan in sending humanitarian aid organised by Russia.

Serbian security analyst Zoran Dragisic told N1 that sending humanitarian aid under such circumstances "could be understood as taking Russia's side in Syrian conflict."

According to local media, the aid will be sent by Russian planes that would take off from the airport in Serbia's southern town of Nis.