Battle Rages on in Lawless Albanian Village

Albanian special forces units using armoured vehicles combed through the village of Lazarat on Tuesday, while drug traffickers shot back, attempting to halt the crackdown on their cannabis-growing operations.

One police officer and two shepherds were wounded as authorities tightened their grip on a village that has become synonymous with uncontrolled crime.

The Ministry of Interior said that the authorities destroyed 60,000 plants of cannabis and ten tons of marijuana on Tuesday.  

Seven suspects accused of a shootout and of attacking and robbing a camera crew from Albania’s A1 Report TV a day earlier were also detained.

Among those arrested is the suspected drugs baron Rezip Mahmutaj, who turned himself in to the police on Tuesday evening.

In Mahmutaj’s three-storey villa overlooking the village, police discovered a drugs laboratory used to process marijuana.

Reacting to the attack on the journalists, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Dunja Mijatovic, called on the government to bring those responsible to justice.

“Violence against journalists is unacceptable, safety is a basic pre-condition for their work,” Mijatović said. "There must be no impunity for attacks on journalists, and the perpetrators must be brought to justice as soon as possible,” she added.

Since Sunday, nearly 800 police officers have been laying siege to the village, which straggles down the slopes of a mountain six kilometres from the museum city of Gjirokastra – which produced an estimated 900 metric tons of marijuana last year alone.

The annual street value of the drugs produced in Lazarat is as much as €4.5 billion, nearly half of Albania’s GDP.