Drug Seizures in Pozarevac and Kucevo, Two Men Arrested
Acting on an order from the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Pozarevac, police arrested two men, seizing 141 grams of suspected cocaine in Pozarevac and 720 grams of marijuana in Kucevo.
Drug seizures in Pozarevac and Kucevo ended with the arrest of two men. Officers from the Ministry of Interior (MUP) searched two houses, one in Pozarevac and one in Kucevo, and found substances suspected to be narcotics in both. They acted on an order from the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Pozarevac.
The men arrested were Z. M., 39, from Pozarevac and S. S., 52, from Kucevo. They are charged with the criminal offense of unauthorized production and trafficking of narcotics. Both were ordered held for up to 48 hours.
What was found in the two houses?
In the house in Pozarevac, police found three packages containing about 141 grams of powder suspected to be cocaine. The find in Kucevo differed in both type and quantity: several small packets holding a total of 720 grams of dried plant matter suspected to be marijuana, along with an electronic scale.
Suspicion is not a finding. The type of substance and its purity are established through forensic analysis, which is why the statement uses the language of suspicion regarding cocaine and marijuana rather than asserting it as fact.
What the Interior Ministry said
The statement is short and sticks to the basic facts of the arrests.
Members of the Ministry of Interior in Pozarevac and Kucevo, acting on an order from the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Pozarevac, arrested Z. M. (born 1987) of Pozarevac and S. S. (born 1974) of Kucevo, on grounds of reasonable suspicion that they committed the criminal offense of unauthorized production and trafficking of narcotics.
That is how it was worded in the statement released on August 7. Following the criminal processing, both men will be brought before the prosecutor’s office in Pozarevac along with a criminal complaint, and it will decide on the further course of proceedings.
How this compares with larger seizures
The combined weight seized at the two houses is just under a kilogram. By comparison, in a Belgrade operation covered separately, police seized 85 kilograms of narcotics and arrested three people. The gap is an order of magnitude, and it points to different links in the same chain: one is product in transit, the other is what gets kept at home.
Both men face the same charge even though different substances and different quantities were found in their houses. The name of the offense does not distinguish by type of drug, that distinction only enters into the assessment of severity and the sentence a court eventually hands down.
An electronic scale tends to stand out in drug statements for the same reason. On its own it proves nothing, but it belongs to the circumstances prosecutors point to when arguing that a quantity was not intended for personal use. The classification of the offense is made by the prosecutor’s office, not the police.
Branicevo District covers both Pozarevac and Kucevo, towns roughly forty kilometers apart, so two searches on the same day under the same prosecutor’s order are likely part of one operation. Whether there is a connection between the two suspects is not clear from the statement, and police did not say.
Both men are presumed innocent until a final verdict. What the prosecutor’s office will propose after they are brought in is not clear from the statement, and MUP did not provide further details.
