>From http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3905b0654c0b.htm >>>First he gets the 'honourary' knighthood from the Britlanders; now he gets another piece of mystery medal (sic) from the Albanians, “for the victory of humanism and democracy in the region, for the establishment of dignity and of human rights in Kosovo, against the dictatorial forces and Serb genocide.” What follows in the second article is what the Albaniacs are REALLY interested in!!! A<>E<>R <<< {{<Begin>}} Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works. NATO Supreme Commander Receives Albania’s Highest Medal Foreign Affairs Opinion (Published) Source: Albanian news.com Published: 04/25/00 Author: Unknown Posted on 04/25/2000 07:49:09 PDT by Miss Antiwar NATO Supreme Commander Receives Albania’s Highest Medal TIRANA - The Supreme Commander of NATO forces in Western Europe said a top Albania award he received on Monday was an appreciation of the efforts the allied forces have made to create peace in the Balkans. General Wesley C. Clark, who was for a one-day official visit was awarded by Albania’s President Rexhep Meidani the country’s top medal, that of Skenderbeg. “I accept this award in the name of all the NATO militaries, to assure the community that Milosevic will not be in Kosovo any more,” Clark said during the award ceremony. “We will continue to be in Kosovo to protect all of its inhabitants.” President Meidani reasoned the award with Clark’s fight “for the victory of humanism and democracy in the region, for the establishment of dignity and of human rights in Kosovo, against the dictatorial forces and Serb genocide.” {{<End>}} >From The National Post {{<Begin>}} Page URL: http://www.nationalpost.com/story.asp?f=000424/268590 Monday, April 24, 2000 Albanian mob invades Italy The collapse of law and order across the Adriatic has created a criminal element that even the Mafia fears Patrick Graham National Post BRINDISI, Italy - Johnny knows just how brutal the Albanian mafia can be. The former auto mechanic for Saddam Hussein turns his head away and starts to cry as he describes how his friend was shot in front of him and his body dumped into the Adriatic Sea. Like thousands of others, Johnny's family scraped together $6,000 (US) to have him smuggled into Italy with a group of other Iraqis. But when they reached the Albanian port of Vllore, the smugglers demanded more. One family handed over a gold necklace and Johnny had enough money to satisfy them. His friend had only his watch. "Take it," he said to Johnny. "They are going to kill me." Now hiding in a refugee hostel in southern Italy protected by police, the young Iraqi weeps as he recalls his friend's words. Ten years ago, few people knew anything about Albania. Today, its gangsters have become so notorious for violence they give even Italian mobsters pause. In the north, the Albanians have taken the prostitution racket away from the country's toughest Mafia branch, the 'Ndrangheta. In the south, they control the drugs, guns, prostitution and human smuggling across the Adriatic and have forced an alliance with the local Mafia group. Even priests who work with women sold into sexual slavery must travel with bodyguards for fear the Albanian kidnappers will take revenge. Now Italian investigators suspect a flood of cocaine into the country may be the result of Albanian criminals working in the United States, a connection being probed by Italian police and the Federal Bureau of Investigations. "The Albanian mafia is especially violent," said Cataldo Motta, a Mafia prosecutor in the province of Puglia in southern Italy. "We know how to fight against the Mafia, but now we have a new one -- and it is a foreign culture we don't understand." Ironically, this is also the view of Italians on the other side of the law. "I hate Albanians. Their criminals have become rich and we've become poor. They have a lot of money because they work with girls and drugs," a cigarette smuggler told the National Post. "Both the Mafia and Albanians are violent but at least the Mafia has some rules," went on the man, who was shot by local mafiosi in a dispute two years ago. "The Albanians don't care about life at all, they'll kill you without reason." But those who suffer most are ordinary Albanians. "Normal Albanians are terrified of these gangs," said Natasha Shehu, an Albanian lawyer living in Italy, whose clients include many people smuggled in by the mafia. "The criminals have nothing to lose -- no other jobs, and no stable political situation to control them." The east coast of Puglia is only 80 kilometres from Albania. But from 1945 to 1990, when the Albanian communist dictatorship collapsed, Italians knew little about their neighbours. But after 1990, the refugees started to arrive -- more than 80,000 in the past decade. Italy was forced to take an interest, sending aid as well as soldiers and police to try and reduce the chaos exported by its neighbour. Albanian gangs quickly branched out from ferrying their countrymen across the Adriatic. They became one of the main conduits for illegal immigrants trying to slip into Europe. Today, even Chinese immigrants travel through Albania after being flown to Moscow and bused to Vllore. With the refugees came prostitutes, drugs and weapons for the Italian Mafia, often stolen from the communist arsenals. Customs officers in Puglia say every drug smuggler they catch is Albanian, often clandestini, refugees who are working off the cost of their $500 (US) passage. The Albanian mafia grew out of the country's decade-long collapse. Though they started as groups of low-level hoods and smugglers, they have developed into sophisticated -- and little understood -- organizations that have profited from globalization, like their counterparts in Eastern Europe and South America, with whom they are closely connected. In the mid 1990s, the Albanian mafia even brought over cocaine- growing experts from Columbia to help introduce the crop to Albania, which already produces heroin and marijuana. The success of the Albanian gangs is due, in part, to their apprenticeship under the Italian Mafia with whom they have now formed equitable partnerships. "The contacts between the Italian and Albanian criminals started in the early 1990s," said Angelo Loconte, chief investigator with the serious crime unit in Brindisi. "The Albanians were used by the Italians to do their dirty work, the jobs that had previously been done by people under 18 who would not be sent to jail. The Albanians were willing to kill and they just didn't take life as seriously. They became the street dealers and the enforcers ... The Italians were the brains and the Albanians became their hands." By 1993, the Albanians were working independently and Puglia's local arm of the Mafia, the Sacra Corona Unita (United Sacred Crown) realized it was better to make a deal with the newcomers than fight them. "The Italians were good teachers but now the pupils are better," commented Ms. Shehu. Their success in Italy was partly due to the organizational structure of the Sacra Corona Unita, the country's youngest Mafia organization. This group, which sprang up during the 1980s, is essentially a collection of regional gangs, linked like beads on a rosary. Its existence was not uncovered until the early 1990s when a series of high-profile court cases resulted in the arrest of many of its leaders. This created an opportunity for the Albanian gangs, who penetrated Puglia like an alien virus encountering a weak immune system. But the virus has so far defied analysis. It is striking how little is known, even in Italy, about the Albanian crime syndicates. "We have only one document from the DIA [Italy's anti-Mafia agency] about the Albanian mafia," said Michele Emiliano, the Mafia prosecutor who first uncovered and prosecuted the Sacra Corona Unita. "In it they wrote that the Albanian mafia is based on family groups, but we have to be careful before saying that they are similar to the Italian Mafia because we don't really have very much evidence. The division among clans or family groups in Albania was originally a social division, not a criminal one. Today, every activity in Albania still works in that way." But the Italians cannot investigate the criminals' organizations based in Albania because the justice system there is barely functioning. Italy also refuses to have any agreements with Albania because reciprocity would require that Italian citizens be exposed to the Albanian court system. "I am pessimistic about the future -- it's hard to control the Cosa Nostra, but it is impossible to control what is going on in Albania. The channel of illegal traffic there is completely open," said Mr. Motta, who travels with bodyguards wherever he goes. "Now there are a lot of Albanians in Italy, they understand our system, and it is becoming impossible to fight them. For instance, we often imprison the same people twice, but we don't even know it because they have so many forms of false I.D." The Albanian mafias have now forged business relationships with their Italian counterparts, becoming part of the local system. "Pushing the 'Ndrangheta out of the prostitution in the north of Italy was probably a mistake, but the Albanians are very violent and they were just starting out -- they had not learned any 'diplomacy,' " he explained. "Now the two groups don't want to fight with each other, they just want to make money." "Pronti -- everyone ready?" asks Inspector Roberto Barnaba. "Andiamo, let's go." Wearing jeans with his ponytail hanging over a leather jacket, he looks like a young Harvey Keitel as he leads dozens of uniformed special police in flak jackets over a low stone wall and across the fields toward a gubbia, Pugliese dialect for a smuggler's hideout. The old farm, surrounded by almond trees, is the perfect place to keep drugs and refugees until they can be smuggled to northern Italy. But the hour-long search of its vaulted rooms and outbuildings turns up nothing more than tire tracks and the remains of some satanic rituals. Insp. Barnaba and his patrol get back into their blue police vans and continue their patrol, looking for clandestini who arrive almost every night on the nearby beaches. Driving down to the sea, the patrol stops among the brush oak stands of a World Wildlife-protected area lying between the Adriatic and the main highway, a favourite depot of the human smugglers. Empty packs of L&M cigarettes, unknown in Italy but popular in Albania, lie scattered around piles of discarded clothes and shoes. "Some must have arrived last night," says Insp. Barnaba. Poking a pair of women's blue underwear with his foot he says, ironically, "There was a woman among them." The police begin searching the underbrush for guns and drugs left by the smugglers to be retrieved later. The refugees, who arrive at night or early in the morning, are usually picked up by cars waiting on the nearby highway. This morning the police are too late. In the past, they have found bodies buried in the sand of popular beaches, casualties of the smugglers' indifference to the lives of their clients as they force them to swim ashore. "When we got near the beach, they pushed everybody out of the boats with guns -- women, children, everybody -- because they didn't want to be caught," said Johnny, the young Iraqi. The boat that carried him and 31 others, shivering and seasick, took 4 1/2 hours to make the crossing from Vllore. Made in Italy to the smugglers' specifications, the fibreglass-hulled, open craft are usually powered by two 250-horsepower engines and can reach speeds of 50 knots. A dozen leave Vllore at the same time and land at different points in Puglia. Johnny said he left Iraq by driving to the Turkish border. He and other family members then walked for eight days to Istanbul. He went on alone, joining a group of Iraqi refugees travelling with the Turkish mafia to Bulgaria, where they were picked up by Albanians. After 20 days locked in a house in Vllore, he was put on a boat just after his friend was murdered. "After I arrived in Italy, I wanted to kill all Albanians. I didn't eat for a week I was so afraid," he said. "If I had known what the trip would have been like, I would have preferred to die in Iraq." He is one of the hundreds of Iraqis, Chinese, North Africans and others in the Casa Regina Pacis, southern Italy's largest refugee centre, in a converted children's seaside camp. The police guarding it are not just keeping the refugees in, they are protecting them from the Albanian gangs that brought them over. "We don't have any problem with the refugees in the centre," said Don Cesare, the Roman Catholic priest in charge, who was assigned three bodyguards by the police after a kidnapping. "But there are people who don't like the centre because they want to keep control over the refugees." Many of the women here were kidnapped in Kosovo and Albania, or given false job offers in Eastern Europe. The gangs are notoriously violent toward women, a legacy of Albanian culture. "Traditionally, women are objects in Albania -- they can be sold for the price of a cow. In the past, an Albanian girl had a bullet as part of her dowry so that her husband could shoot her if she was not a virgin," explained Ms. Shehu. This week, a 23 year-old Albanian man was arrested on a beach in Puglia and charged with sexual slavery for forcing two Moldavian women into prostitution. The women told police they had been sold by two Romanian men in February to an Albanian gang. They were raped repeatedly, then forced on to a smuggler's speedboat to Italy. In Belgrade, a Moldavian prostitute hoping to go to Canada as a stripper told how she had also been tricked into prostitution. But at least, she said, she was not controlled by the Albanian gangs, who are the most dangerous pimps. "They purposely turn the women into objects before they put them to work," said Mr. Motta. "They are kidnapped, raped and enslaved, then often sold again to others who repeat the same process, so the women have no will of their own." Like other mafias that sprang up after the Cold War, the Albanian mafia's success depends on their brutality and their ability to adapt to the global economy. They have made alliances with other crime groups and can change their activity to suit market demand. "In the past, to create a high-level mafia, you needed about 50 years," said Mr. Emiliano. "Today, you need only a few years. It is a question of technology. Crime exists primarily in an organized form. It doesn't exist any more as individual crime groups." The cocaine trade is an example of the the drug industry's globalization, with the Turkish mafia trading heroin for cocaine from Columbia and Albanians using international connections to ship it to Europe though their homeland. "Cocaine is a new activity -- it's much more recent here than heroin," the Mafia prosecutor said. "In the past, the two were different businesses with different markets. Now, consumers are changing. Today, we have fewer junkies using drugs every day. Instead, the users are occasional, say on weekends, and there are not as many addicts." Heroin, too, is used in a different way: Fewer people inject it, but instead smoke it or mix it with cocaine. Dealers have to sell many different drugs because customers want small amounts of hashish, ecstasy, cocaine, and so on. The Albanian mob also has the advantage of being able to blackmail fellow Albanian migrants around the world. "The Albanian mafia has a huge capacity to expand itself. Many times decent Albanians are obliged to help the Albanian mafia," Mr. Emiliano said. "If there are no other Albanian criminals in the country, they ask for help from law-abiding Albanians and put pressure on their relatives at home, who have little or no police protection. " With police unable to keep up with these rapid changes, Mr. Emiliano believes Europe needs an organization similar to the FBI. "If we continue to work only in our own countries, with all the limits of our work, we won't be able to to transform ourselves as fast as the Albanian mafia." But there are other, more profound reasons, for the growth of the mafias, said Don Cesare. He does not believe the underlying causes of the problem will ever disappear. "If there are people wanting prostitutes, they will be bringing them into the country. It's business, and there is nothing governments can do. And there are people who need to escape where they live -- there always will be. They are poor." | News | Financial Post | Arts & Life | Sports | Commentary | Diversions | Forums | Home | Site Map | Feedback | Info | Copyright © Southam Inc. All rights reserved. Optimized for browser versions 3.0 and higher. 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