TIRANA, Sept. 21 – The issue of marijuana production and trafficking has taken center stage in Albania’s political debate this week, with the government saying there had been progress in the fight and the opposition replying that authorities were allowing it to thrive.
Adding fuel the the debate, large amounts of marijuana originating from Albania are being caught in neighboring countries. And traffickers are suspected of having returned to using small airplanes to smuggle the narcotics.
Last week, a small plane traveling from Bari, Italy crash landed in the area of Ishem, Durres.
The Italian pilot, Andrea Guidi, was slightly injured. The 69-year-old told police that he was flying over Albania “to enjoy the view due to the nice weather” and that the plane crashed “due to a technical defect,” but the circumstances have led many to believe that he was in a drug trafficking mission, especially since police also found what appeared to be a recently-constructed dirt runway near the crash landing.
Prosecutors have officially charged Guidi of violation of Albania’s airspace.
A veteran journalist, Artan Hoxha, revealed last week on TV Klan that the pilot agreed to a plea deal and admitted that he was flying over Albania to inspect the vast, unpopulated terrain, which he planned to use two weeks later to traffic over 200 kg of cannabis.
Once the show was over, Hoxha was detained over an “unlawful disclosure of information related to the case to the media.”
Hoxha’s detainment was perceived as a confirmation that the Italian pilot was indeed in a drug trafficking mission. The reporter was released the same night, and he told media that prosecutors had asked him about his source. Hoxha claimed that he was not aware “that the information was part of a secret investigation.” Prosecutors seized Hoxha’s mobile phones after he disagreed to reveal his phone calls and text messages received during the day of the crash.
Opposition parties immediately reacted to Hoxha’s detention and claimed Minister of Interior Saimir Tahiri had tipped the reporter off in an attempt to “compromise the ongoing investigation.”
Former Minister of Interior Affairs and Democratic Party lawmaker Flamur Noka expressed concern “about the minister’s intervention to compromise the investigation against the Italian pilot” and hinted that Tahiri allegedly wanted to give more time to “Albanian drug dealers who hired the plane, to hide their real intentions.”
Earlier, during a parliament session, Noka caught the minister off guard as he announced that a “small plane carrying drugs had crashed in Ishem” and that “Albania was being used by light aircrafts to traffic cannabis.”
The next day, ministry officials issued an official statement: “If Flamur Noka is a witness to any plane clash, then he should go to prosecutors and reveal what he knows. He should also say more about the reasons why he made public an official investigation on the plane that crashed, or even name the prosecutor that has been tipping off information.”
This is not the first time that the opposition has accused Tahiri of ties to criminals. Last September, Democratic Party accused him of protecting drug trafficking cartels that smuggled cannabis to Italy by using light aircrafts.
Two years ago, a Piper single-engine plane crashed in the area of Divjaka, 80 kilometers southwest of the capital, Tirana.
Police found eight bags (460 kilograms) full of marijuana nearby about to be loaded in the plane. The Italian pilot Giorgio Riformato, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for international drug trafficking. Another six co-defendants were sentenced to a total of 47 years behind bars.
The U.S. State Department considers Albania is a major source country for the production of marijuana and a transit point for shipments of cocaine and heroin destined to the European markets.
