[NYC-L] FBI vs Alb Terror Mafia?

[Jeton Ademaj]

hi folks

head's up, looks like the Guantanamo net may be widening to include 
Albanians... make sure the albo community knows to keep trak of its own. no 
i dont care if real terrorist mafiosos die but i certainly dont want 
innocent avg albos suffering what innocent average egyptians and saudis and 
pakis have been facing from Ashcroft...many albos work in cash and are 
muslim and might have iffy immigration status: ripe cadidates for 
oppression.

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/LAW/08/18/albanians.mob/index.html


FBI: Albanian mobsters 'new Mafia'
>From Justice Producer Terry Frieden


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Thousands of Albanians and others who fled the Balkans 
for the United States in recent years have emerged as a serious organized 
crime problem, threatening to displace La Cosa Nostra (LCN) families as 
kingpins of U.S. crime, top FBI officials said Wednesday.

The Albanian criminal enterprises, operating largely in New York and other 
Eastern seaboard cities, represent a major challenge to federal agents 
because of their propensity for violence and brutality, the officials said.

"They are a hardened group, operating with reckless abandon," said Chris 
Swecker, the newly named FBI assistant director for the Criminal 
Investigative Division.

Swecker and other officials said some of the Albanians served as enforcers 
in the established Mafia families for several years.

When the FBI dealt a major blow to the LCN families in recent years, the 
Albanians began to emerge, and now are taking over turf once controlled by 
the traditional mob bosses.

Officials said ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro are 
included in the clans and crews that emerged in the organized crime world.

FBI officials said Russian and many other organized crime groups operating 
in the United States are much more sophisticated and less violent than the 
Albanians.

Part of the Albanian emergence stems from the FBI's success in busting the 
LCN.

Operation Buttondown, the code name for the FBI's campaign to crush the 
Mafia, reduced the number of families operating in the United States from 24 
to only nine, the FBI officials said.

More than 100 leading members of LCN and more than 600 associates were 
arrested in the crackdown on organized crime.

Although no terrorism connection has been discovered, the FBI says it is 
closely watching to see whether the militant Muslims in the emerging 
organized crime world demonstrate ties to organizations suspected of 
involvement in terrorist financing.