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Senior Bosnian official arrested

Xinhua, January 12, 2016 Adjust font size:

Bakir Dautbasic, Secretary General of Ministry of Security of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and candidate for Minister of Transport and Communication, was arrested on Monday.

Acting on orders of the Prosecutor's Office of BiH and the Court of BiH, members of State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA) arrested Dautbasic and his wife Bilsena Sahman, former Director of Public Company "Farmacy Sarajevo," both suspected of obstructing justice in the case which Prosecutor's Office of Kosovo have been carrying on against suspected Balkan drug kingpin Naser Keljmendi.

"During the operation, evidence was collected that the suspects undertook illegal activities to force a witness to falsely testify before the Prosecutor's Office of BiH and the Kosovo judiciary against Naser Keljmendi," Press-Office of Prosecutor's Office of BiH announced.

Since 2003, Dautbasic has served as Secretary General of Ministry of Security. In October 2015, He was officially announced as the candidate of Union for Better Future (SBB) for Minister of Transport and Communication in the state government.

Keljmendi is suspected to be leader of one of the strongest ethnic Albanian criminal families in the Balkans. According to local reports, Keljmendi was the boss of the drug smuggling and money laundering criminal organization which had been working in BiH and Kosovo.

In early 2012, the United States sanctioned Kelmendi for drug trafficking.

In the 1990s and 2000s, Keljmendi had been living in Sarajevo, capital of BiH. In 2013, he fled to Kosovo where he was arrested. Besides drug trafficking, Keljmendi is accused for the murder of local racketeer Ramiz Delalic in 2009 in Sarajevo. Enditem