Naser Kelmendi

Pristina Basic Court found Naser Kelmendi guilty on Thursday and sentenced him to four years and eight months of imprisonment on drug trafficking charges.

In an operation codenamed "Rez" ("Cut") Bosnian police on Tuesday arrested Elvis Kelmendi, son of the controversial Kosovo-born figure Naser Kelmendi, and six other suspects, for organised crime in connection with international smuggling and illegal trafficking in drugs as well as other crimes.

The case of Naser Kelmendi, who was found guilty of running a narcotics operation and was jailed for six years in February, has been sent for a retrial by Kosovo Appeals Court on Thursday, his lawyer Besnik Berisha told BIRN.

Kelmendi will be released while he awaits retrial.

The state court in Sarajevo on Wednesday acquitted the leader of the Alliance for a Better Future for Bosnia party, businessman Fahrudin Radoncic, of obstructing the work of the judiciary, along with three other defendants.

After the Basic Court in Pristina jailed Naser Kelmendi for six years, after finding him guilty of running a narcotics operation, Andrew Hughes, prosecutor for the EU rule-of-law mission in Kosovo, EULEX, said some witnesses had been threatened to pressurize them to change their testimonies.

A court in Kosovo on Thursday found Naser Kelmendi guilty of the "unauthorised possession with intent to distribute, sell and/or export/import dangerous narcotic drugs" and jailed him for six years.

The Basic Court in Pristina found Kelmendi not guilty of the murder of Ramiz Delacic, however, or of organised crime and other charges related to narcotics.

The Basic Court in Pristina on Tuesday ordered the release of Naser Kelmendi, the alleged Balkan drug baron, and said he should be put under house arrest.

A protected witness, K1, one of the members of Naser Kelmendi's alleged crime ring, testified against his alleged former boss on Monday, stating that the group smuggled heroin from Turkey through Bulgaria, Slovenia and Croatia to Bosnia, where it was sold to different European countries.

Bosnian politician Fahrudin Radoncic appeared as a witness on Monday before the Municipal Court in Pristina, in the trial of Naser Kelmendi.

Kelmendi is a Kosovo Albanian accused of participation in organized crime, drug and weapons trafficking, and of possible involvement in the murder of Ramiz Delalic aka Celo, a Bosniak underworld figure killed in 2007.

The trial of the leader of the Alliance for a Better Future for Bosnia, SBBBiH, Fahrudin Radoncic, his party colleague, Bakir Dautbasic, Dautbasic's partner, Bilsena Sahman, and a former employee of the US embassy in Sarajevo, Zijad Hadzijahic, started on Wednesday.