LJUBLJANA, June 18 (Xinhua) -- Slovenian police have smashed a 23-member criminal ring involved in international arms smuggling and trafficking, arresting 15 of them, in cooperation with law enforcement from several other countries, national media reported on Monday.
The outcome came after a series of raids at 39 addresses and 38 cars across Slovenia last Thursday, the Slovenian Press Agency STA said, a joint operation involving some 100 police officers and investigators.
Darko Majhenic, the head of the National Bureau of Investigation, said that they had seized 21 handguns, two revolvers, six riffles, more than 3,000 bullet rounds and other illicit weapons, as well as mobile phones and other electronic gadgets and objects.
Six out of the 15 apprehended suspects have been brought before the investigating judge, who remanded them in custody. The prosecution is seeking for the court to open investigation against the 23 suspects for 78 counts of arms trafficking-related crime and one drug-related crime, said STA.
Simultaneously with the operation in Slovenia, house searches were also conducted in Croatia and Spain. STA reported quoting Majhenic as saying that six suspects had been remanded in custody in Croatia, while the investigation in Spain was ongoing.
The busts last week were part of the closing stage of an international investigation that went on for several years and involved police from Italy, Croatia and Spain and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and Europol.
According to Majhenic, the Slovenian police had been collecting evidence since September 2016 by means of conventional and covert investigative measures.
The weapons had been "intended for criminal rings from the Western Balkans that have their cells in larger EU countries and are involved in smuggling drugs from South America to Europe and cultivate drugs in Spain", the senior official said.
Majhenic said that the arms were intended for the gravest criminal acts such as robberies, murders, extortion and threatening.
