Drug Smuggling Trial: Oruqi to Plead Guilty

Luan Oruqi is going to admit the offence he was charged said today his attorney Mirza Kovač at the beginning of a trial before the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH).

Oruqi was charged with smuggling 6.65 kilograms of heroin from Serbia to BiH in the beginning of this year. The BiH Prosecutor’s Office said in an indictment that the street value of the drug is around one million KM.

Judge Goran Radević proposed the parties to reach an agreement on the sentence until the next hearing scheduled for June 7.

Međutim, odbrana i Tužilaštvo BiH se ni u ranijim razgovorima nisu mogli dogovoriti, jer je Oruqijev advokat Kovač tražio manju kaznu, do pet godina zatvora. Inače, to je minimalna kazna koja je zakonom predviđena za ovakvo krivično djelo.

However, the defense and BiH Prosecutor’s Office could not agree because Oruqi’s lawyer Kovač asked for a sentence under five years in prison, the minimum for this crime.

Prosecutor Oleg Čavka said that he would never put his name on a verdict with such a negligible sentence for a foreigner who had smuggled so much heroin into BiH.

Kovač said that Čavka’s statement discriminates against the foreigners, that there’ll be no plea agreement, and that he’d let the Panel of Judges decide on the length of sentence.

Kovač asked the Panel in his opening words to take into account the fact that Oruqi’s wife had to emigrate from Kosovo with their three underage children for security reasons. After Oruqi pleaded guilty and revealed the name of the man who hired him for the job, his uncle was killed in a bomb attack in Peć, Kosovo.

At the end of hearing Judge Radević nevertheless has asked the prosecutor and the defense to try to reach an agreement on the sentence so that the trial would not go on and on following appeals on the verdict.

Officers of the State Investigation and Protection Agency arrested Oruqi in a Sarajevo suburb of Ilidža on Feb 2. The police earlier found drugs in his car. He got the drug in Montenegro and smuggled it via Serbia, according to the indictment. He was a mule for a certain Leonardo from Peć, Kosovo.

The defendant told the Prosecutor’s Office that he smuggled the drugs into BiH through a border crossing near Višegrad. He proceeded to Sarajevo where he was to deliver the drugs to an unknown person and receive €5,000. He was arrested before the drug changed hands.

Forty-years old Oruqi resides in Priština. He is a manager by profession. He is the owner of a Kosovo fashion agency “Model Agency” which hired also BiH models.

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