Greek police on Friday announced the outcome of a year-long multinational investigation into the activities of rival Balkan criminal gangs, Fox News reported.
The investigation, assisted by police agencies Interpol and Europol, resulted in the arrest of 10 suspects reportedly behind numerous murders across Europe.
A decade-long rivalry between gangs, mostly involved in drug trafficking, has left 60 alleged gang members dead in several European countries, police Major General Fotis Douitsis.
Doutsis told reporters: “A single criminal organisation split into two separate, rival organisations in 2014 when a shipment of 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of cocaine in Spain was lost.”
The killings include two shootings in Greece in 2020, when four members of the same gang living under assumed identities were shot dead. In addition, two alleged criminals were shot dead in a restaurant near Athens and two others were killed in a car park on the island of Corfu.
Constantia Dimoglidou, a Greek police spokeswoman, said that earlier this week one alleged gang member was arrested in Greece, seven in Serbia and two in Spain, while 17 other gang members are in various European prisons.
Police officers from Greece, Serbia and Spain participated in the arrests. At a press conference in Athens, Greek police also stressed they had identified a total of 39 alleged members of rival gangs based in Serbia and Montenegro.
