Naser Kelmendi Indicted

On July 4th, over a year following his arrest, drug kingpin Naser Kelmendi was indicted by Kosovo’s Special Prosecution Office, charging him with offenses including organized crime, murder, and possession of narcotics. Kelmendi had been arrested in May 2013 by Kosovo police due to a Bosnian warrant. The previous year, he had been listed on the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctions list as a narcotics kingpin. As a Kosovo-born, ethnic Albanian with citizenship from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kelmendi was able to move his shipments of heroin and other narcotics throughout the Balkans. He also laundered his money through various businesses and investments in multiple countries, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and Kosovo. 

The Organized Crime and Corruption and Reporting Project, OCCRP (https://reportingproject.net/occrp/) has written extensively about Kelmendi and his connections. The most controversial of these include associations between Kelmendi and Fahrudin Radoncic, the recent Minister of Security for Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Ramush Haradinaj, a former Prime Minister of Kosovo. He also has alleged connections with the Montenegrin drug kingpin Darko Saric, currently on trial in Serbia. These alleged connections demonstrate how deeply embedded organized crime is in some Balkans nations and indicate the scope of the larger problem. 

Despite Kelmendi’s arrest on a Bosnian warrant, Kosovo was not able to extradite Kelmendi to Bosnia, as the two states do not have a formal recognition or an extradition treaty. This stems from events in 2008, when Kosovo declared independence from Serbia. As Bosnia has a sizable Serbian minority, they have chosen to not recognize Kosovo’s status as a sovereign state. In previous instances, this complex international relations reality has forced Kosovo to release some criminals from its custody, most notably Kelmendi’s son, Elvis Kelmendi. 

The indictment of Kelmendi is certainly a good sign for rule of law in Kosovo and the Balkans more widely, but this remains a crime-plagued and complex region. Nothing like the wanton violence of the 1990s breakup of Yugoslavia remains, but the redrawn borders and lack of trust between Balkans nations likely facilitates the organized crime operations by Kelmendi and those like him. Lack of cooperation between Bosnia and Kosovo severely conflicted the arrest and indictment of Kelmendi, so it is reasonable to assume that the prosecution will be similarly difficult. As long as the Balkan nations are unable to cooperate fully, organized crime will continue to operate with complete disregard for international borders. All of these countries should be held accountable for their organized crime and narcotics trafficking issues, especially in light of their desire for European Union accession. Kelmendi’s indictment is encouraging, but each country in the Balkans can not do it alone; true collaboration and cooperation will be politically difficult, but it is most certainly necessary.