The Supreme Court of Kosovo has rejected as unfounded a request for protection of legality filed in a case involving a suspected organized criminal group accused of drug trafficking and money laundering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The decision was taken by a panel of the Supreme Court in the criminal case against 20 defendants, who are suspected of participating in or organizing an organized criminal group involved in narcotics trafficking and money laundering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The defense had challenged the rulings of the Basic Court in Pristina and the Court of Appeals, which had ordered the continuation of detention for the suspects. The request for protection of legality was submitted by the defense lawyer of the defendant Sh.B.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the Supreme Court, based on the evidence obtained at this stage, there is reasonable suspicion that the defendants committed the criminal offenses they are charged with, while the final determination of guilt will be made during the trial proceedings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In its reasoning, the Court emphasized that there are sufficient legal grounds for continuing detention, referring to evidence collected during investigations, including communications obtained through international legal cooperation, communication transcripts, and contacts between the suspects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the suspicions, the defendants acted as part of an organized criminal group involved in drug trafficking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Supreme Court also assessed that there is a risk of the defendants fleeing, taking into account the seriousness of the criminal offenses, the potential penalties prescribed by law, as well as suspicions that some of them used false identities or changed their identity to evade authorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It further stated that if released, the suspects could influence co-defendants, coordinate testimonies, or obstruct the administration of evidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Court concluded that lighter security measures would not be sufficient to ensure the presence of the defendants and the normal conduct of criminal proceedings, thus upholding the lower courts\u2019 decisions to continue detention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Supreme Court of Kosovo has rejected as unfounded a request for protection of legality filed in a case involving a suspected organized criminal group accused of drug trafficking and money laundering. The decision was taken by a panel of the Supreme Court in the criminal case against 20 defendants, who are suspected of participating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":83826,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[301,296],"tags":[7176,985],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83824"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83824"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83829,"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83824\/revisions\/83829"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}