STA, 4 October 2019 - An officer of the Koper Police Department who was, according to unofficial reports by the newspaper Dnevnik, the head of the district's narcotics task force, has been arrested on charges of drug trafficking. He was sacked and banned from possessing his duty weapon at the end of September and is currently in house arrest.
The officer, arrested on charges of illegal drug production and trade, was put in preventive detention on Sunday evening. Upon appealing against the custody decision, he was put under house arrest today and will remain under it until further developments, his lawyer Monika Mavsar told the STA.
The Koper Police Department said on Monday that the accused was arrested as a result of a covert investigation based on the suspicion of a criminal offence of illegal drug production and trade, including banned substances in sport and ingredients used for producing illegal drugs.
The suspect has been banned from carrying out officer duties during the prosecution case and has been blocked from accessing confidential police data.
Mavsar has told the newspaper Primorske Novice that the confiscated cannabis was not the defendant's and was not meant to be used for trafficking but was meant to ease the defendant's father's medical issues. The father has been put under house arrest as well.
According to Dnevnik, the suspected officer could face up to ten years in prison.
