{"id":81377,"date":"2025-11-13T18:38:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T17:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/euronews.al\/en\/?p=81377"},"modified":"2025-11-13T19:44:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T18:44:08","slug":"europol-arrests-mercenaries-hired-to-kidnap-a-top-albanian-drug-trafficker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/euronews.al\/en\/europol-arrests-mercenaries-hired-to-kidnap-a-top-albanian-drug-trafficker\/","title":{"rendered":"Europol arrests mercenaries hired to kidnap a top Albanian drug trafficker"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The European Police Agency EUROPOL has announced that on November 12 it assisted in an investigation carried out by German authorities regarding a group of mercenaries hired by a criminal network to kidnap the leader of a rival Albanian drug-trafficking gang.<\/p>\n<p>The head of this Albanian gang \u2013 whose name has not been made public \u2013 is suspected of having orchestrated the theft of several tons of cannabis worth millions of euros, reports RFE\/RL.<\/p>\n<p>The coordinated action focused on Latvian nationals, some of whom had backgrounds in the French Foreign Legion.<\/p>\n<p>EUROPOL said that authorities from Denmark, France, Latvia and the United Kingdom were involved in the operation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese highly trained individuals were equipped with professional gear and were operating on behalf of the organized crime group.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On the day of the police operation, four individuals were arrested in Denmark, France, Latvia and the United Kingdom, while two others\u2014who had been arrested in October 2014 in Germany\u2014have already been convicted by the courts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The European Police Agency EUROPOL has announced that on November 12 it assisted in an investigation carried out by German authorities regarding a group of mercenaries hired by a criminal network to kidnap the leader of a rival Albanian drug-trafficking gang. The head of this Albanian gang \u2013 whose name has not been made public [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":81378,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[153,1803],"tags":[243,151],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Europol arrests mercenaries hired to kidnap a top Albanian drug trafficker - Euronews Albania<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/euronews.al\/en\/europol-arrests-mercenaries-hired-to-kidnap-a-top-albanian-drug-trafficker\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Europol arrests mercenaries hired to kidnap a top Albanian drug trafficker - Euronews Albania\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The European Police Agency EUROPOL has announced that on November 12 it assisted in an investigation carried out by German authorities regarding a group of mercenaries hired by a criminal network to kidnap the leader of a rival Albanian drug-trafficking gang. 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