Cops bust European drug ring

[Kelly]

German authorities said they had smashed a pan-European drug ring in a 15-month internationally co-ordinated operation that netted 25 suspects from Albania and former Yugoslavia.

Germany’s federal police force said it had worked with detectives in Italy, the Netherlands, Croatia, Austria and Luxembourg, searching 34 homes on Tuesday.

The raids turned up weapons, ammunition, forged identification papers, substances to dilute narcotics as well as major stashes of cash, expensive jewelry, cars, a yacht and stereo equipment worth more than eight million euros, the federal police said in a statement.

It said that because the suspects were considered "violent and armed," the police had dispatched special commando and anti-terror units.

The investigation was launched based on a probe started in August 2005 by authorities in Trento, northern Italy. Germany’s federal police force said they had taken over the case in July 2006.

Dutch authorities said earlier that one of the suspects, a 33-year-old Serbian, was arrested in Amsterdam while he was with two bodyguards, a Russian and a Montenegrin. A second suspect is a 46-year-old Bosnian.

The ring allegedly imported cocaine from Venezuela and Colombia into Spain, then distributed it throughout Europe.

Police say the group imported heroin from Albania then sent the drugs to Croatia, Slovenia and Italy.

[Atom Bomb]

About 40 cars lined up on Monday morning to block traffic on Route 86, a two-lane north-south road running almost parallel to the Austrian border, in protest over the heavy traffic inundating the rural route.

Route 86 has become popular as a transit road linking Slovenia, Austria, and Croatia in the south and west with Slovakia and the Czech Republic in the north. Traffic counts found a daily transit of nearly nine thousand vehicles, 2,000 of which were trucks, going though the tiny village of Hegyfalu, where concerned citizens set up the roadblock, halting traffic on one of the two lanes.

Spokesman Zoltan Feher said the road had never been meant for trailer trucks and traffic this dense. Its surface has deteriorated and accidents are rising, he added. Feher said authorities had promised to build a new road, with two lanes in each direction, but there were no signs of any such construction at this point. If trucks were forced to pay a toll for using the road, he added, traffic would decline instantly because if they had to pay anyway, trucks would use Austria's nearby A2 motorway instead.

The demonstration is expected to last until 1600 hours local time. Police are directing traffic past the roadblock.