Police last week . Milos Simovic, 30, was arrested trying to cross the Croatia-Serbia border after allegedly shooting a member of an organized crime group in a gunfight.

By Beth Kampschror

after a court found him guilty of ordering a 1995 murder. Sreten Jocic, known as “Joca Amsterdam,” could not have received the new criminal code’s maximum sentence of 40 years, as the new law stipulates that the court should weigh the old code and the new code, and hand down the more lenient of the two sentences. (Fifteen years is the maximum under the old law.)

By Beth Kampschror

last week, and found untold quantities and qualities of drugs, weapons and money. The raids were a continuation of Operation Balkan Warrior, which began last year when Serbian and US DEA agents seized nearly three tons of cocaine destined for Europe in waters off Uruguay. The Serbian-Montenegrin leader of the gang, Darko Saric, remains at large.

By Beth Kampschror

In another strange example of Serbia-South America drug connections, three Serbs working as bodyguards to a Bolivian drug lord were killed last week in a shoot-out in the country, according to Bolivian and Serbian media. A Bolivian policeman has been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the murders. Serbian radio-television B92 :

Italian police last week whom Interpol of the Pink Panthers jewel thieves gang. Radovan Jelusic, who was arrested in a Rome coffee bar carrying a forged Croatian passport, is suspected of involvement in a 2007 jewelry store robbery in Tokyo.

By Beth Kampschror