By Leonora Aliu
As UN General Assembly vote approaches, does Kosovo have the support?
Toward the end of 2014, Slobodan Gavric, a Serbian citizen, was caught in Kosovo’s capital with 12 kilos of explosives, which turned out had been transported from Belgrade to the Arberia neighborhood in Prishtina with no problem whatsoever. As a result, law and order institutions faced a lot of criticism and accusations due to their failure to prevent him from entering Kosovo with weapons which, according to charges, he planned to use for terrorist acts and disturbing the constitutional order.
According to the prosecutor in this case, Gavric entered Kosovo through the Rudnice and Jarinje border crossing without being stopped. In June this year, Gavric was sentenced to 13 years in prison, while the role of the customs officers is being investigated by the Prosecution.
This whole matter provoked a debate, especially within security circles, on the need to impose more rigid control of the state’s borders, as well as on the need to exchange information that is relevant for Kosovo’s security with neighbors. In Gavric’s case, such cooperation would have been needed with Serbia, but it is clear that such a thing is currently almost impossible, despite international efforts to facilitate meetings between Serbian and Kosovar police forces.
A number of regional cross-border initiatives to tackle organized crimes such as human trafficking and drugs smuggling have been established — 33 in total since the mid-’90s — but Kosovo’s lack of recognitions by some countries mean that it is not part of them all. This lack of cooperation, especially with Serbia, in the field of justice and security has made Kosovo a suitable transit country for criminals and just like Serbia it is identified in numerous reports and research papers as a “country vulnerable to organized crime.”
See at: http://kosovotwopointzero.com/en/kosovos-interpol-membership-far-assured/
