![\"Lazarat-police\"](\"http:\/\/prizrenpost.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Lazarat-police.jpg\")
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Police and drug traffickers in the notorious village of Lazarat are slugging it out as the forces of law and order try to reassert control over this gun-toting, lawless community.
\nA half-finished two-storey building near the village church in Dervican, close to the southern border with Greece, is the last barrier between Albanian special forces and the gunfire coming by the nearby outlaw village of Lazarat.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe battle has just started but we will win the war,\u201d a commander of the special forces said at the makeshift base. \u201cBetter a tragic end than an endless strategy,\u201d he added, referring to a possible bloody confrontation between the villagers and security forces.<\/p>\n
Since Sunday, nearly 800 police officers have been laying siege to the village, which straggles down the slopes of a mountain six kilometers from the museum city of Gjirokastra \u2013 which produced an estimated 900 metric tons of marijuana last year alone.<\/p>\n
The street value of the drugs produced in Lazarat is as much as \u20ac4.5 billion, nearly half of Albania\u2019s GDP.<\/p>\n
For the best part of a decade, the village has been off-limits to police. On Monday, as police launched their raid on the village, they targeted the plantation of a suspected drug baron named Rezip Mahmutaj.<\/p>\n
They met heavy machinegun fire, rocket propelled grenades and mortars. <\/p>\n
At noon, after the traffickers had retreated higher up the mountain, special forces using armoured vehicles reached Mahmutaj\u2019s plantation, in the lower part of the village. They destroyed 10,000 cannabis plants, and 1,000 saplings ready to be cultivated. <\/p>\n
Mahmutaj, 46, has a long criminal record. In 2000, he opened fire on a police patrol on the highway near Gjirokstra, wounding an officer.<\/p>\n
Media reports say he is also the main suspect behind the machine-gun attack on an Italian helicopter that was monitoring the drug fields in Lazarat in August 2004.<\/p>\n
After being arrested that September, he was jailed for 22 years for the attack on the police patrol. But he only served only two years in prison after President Alfred Moisiu pardoned him in 2006. <\/p>\n
On Monday, the general directorate of police published a list of two dozen suspects believed to be members of Mahmutaj\u2019s gang and suspected of taking part in the firefight with police.<\/p>\n
At a press conference given at the special forces barracks in Tirana, the Interior Minister, Saimir Tahiri, warned the culprits of harsh retribution if they did not surrender. \u201cThose who opened fire on the police have made a terrible miscalculation,\u201d Tahiri said.<\/p>\n
\u201cDrop your weapons and leave the police do their job, or the force of the law will act like never before,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
However, the traffickers in Lazarat seem to have no intention to surrender.<\/p>\n
As the special forces took a breather outside their armoured cars in the neighbouring village of Dervican in the afternoon, Mahmutaj appeared on a local TV station to dismiss the government\u2019s accusations.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was with my livestock in the mountain last night and have nothing to do with the shootout,\u201d he told News 24 TV. \u201cI have never cultivated cannabis and am only a victim of the politicians who have used me,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
As the commander of the special forces gazed in disbelief at Mahmutaj\u2019s statement, news came that a TV crew from A1 Report TV had been attacked in the village and their car set on fire.<\/p>\n
The crew of four, a reporter, a cameraman and two technicians, were held hostage for 15 minutes by masked armed man before being released. One of the technicians was slightly injured by broken glass when the assailants shot at the car with AK-47s.<\/p>\n
It was unclear whether the operation on Monday was aimed only at Mahmutaj\u2019s plantation, or whether the police plan to sweep the whole village and destroy all the cannabis fields in Lazarat.<\/p>\n
Dritan Germi, a day labourer from the city of Fier, who over the past decade has found work digging ditches for cannabis plants in Lazarat, told BIRN that work in other fields had continued as usual on Monday. He had a pocket full of cash to show it. <\/p>\n
\u201cI dug more ditches today than usual,\u201d he said, reaching for the money. \u201cI am used to the shooting and it does not impress me any longer,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
During the cannabis-planting season, from June to September, the villagers routinely shoot into the air to warn off any approaching outsiders. Stray bullets fired from Lazarat have even wounded people in nearby Gjirokastra in the past. The bursts of gunfire that fill the summer nights are a nightmare for the city\u2019s residents. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe here shots fired every night but last night\u2019s shootout was scary,\u201d said Zenepe Vogli, a teacher who lives in the part of Gjirokastra that is closest to the village.<\/p>\n
Rigers Hoxha, a coffee trader in the 17 September neighbourhood shared the frustration. He awoke on Monday morning to find a large bullet hole, possibly fired from a heavy machine gun, in the shutter of his shop. \u201cWe are tired of Lazarat and of failed police operations against it,\u201d Hoxha said. \u201cLet\u2019s hope this is the final one,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Police chief Artan Didi told a press conference on Monday evening that the police would not finish in Lazarat until they had arrested the traffickers who shot at the police and until \u201cevery cannabis plant is eradicated\u201d.<\/p>\n
Despite the massive size of the police operation, one villager in Lazarat who did not give his name remained defiant. He said he would continue growing cannabis no matter what. \u201cWe will resist the siege no matter what the cost,\u201d he vowed.<\/p>\n
Recognizing that the traffickers in Lazarat were armed to their teeth, and possibly better equipped than the police, the special forces commander at his makeshift base admitted that taking the village would not be easy.<\/p>\n
\u201cUntil now there have been no arrests but rather a battle of nerves,\u201d he said. \u201cIn such a battle, he who resists and endures most will ultimately emerge the winner,\u201d he predicted.\/balkaninsight\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Police and drug traffickers in the notorious village of Lazarat are slugging it out as the forces of law and order try to reassert control over this gun-toting, lawless community. A half-finished two-storey building near the village church in Dervican, close to the southern border with Greece, is the last barrier between Albanian special forces […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,16],"tags":[125],"class_list":["post-1051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-16","tag-police-lay-siege-to-albanias-marijuana-capital"],"views":810,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prizrenpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prizrenpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prizrenpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prizrenpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prizrenpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1051"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/prizrenpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1053,"href":"https:\/\/prizrenpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions\/1053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prizrenpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prizrenpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prizrenpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}