A citizen of Montenegro nicknamed the “Pirate of the Unknown” has been extradited to New York City from Italy to face charges connected to what U.S. authorities called an international drug ring that transported tons of cocaine around the world. The extradition comes after Milos Radonjic was arrested in Italy where authorities say he planned to captain a yacht in an international race.
Radonjic, 34, arrived in Brooklyn on Friday and is scheduled to be arraigned in federal court Monday, according to federal prosecutors and officials with the Department of Homeland Security and FBI. A federal grand jury indicted him and several other people last year on charges of conspiracy and attempt to violate the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act.
According to court filings, Radonjic was a high-ranking member of a transnational drug organization that used commercial cargo ships, including some registered to deliver goods to the U.S., to transport tons of cocaine from South America to Europe for drug cartels in the Balkans. Ship crew members knowingly took part in the alleged trafficking, court documents say.
“Radonjic allegedly organized three separate attempts, with the assistance of a corrupt crew member on a commercial cargo vessel, to load a container ship with more than 2,500 kilograms of cocaine in Ecuador and off the coast of Colombia,” prosecutors said.
U.S. authorities said Radonjic and others arranged to use speed boats to deliver drugs at night to cargo ships on the high seas near Colombia and Ecuador.
Radonjic and others also trafficked narcotics that have “contributed to the overdose and drug addiction crisis in the United States and throughout the world,” U.S. prosecutors wrote in a request to a federal judge to detain Radonjic pending trial.
“This arrest and successful extradition is a lesson that the high seas are not a no-man’s land for the rule of law, and that we are committed to bringing those who violate it to justice,” Breon Peace, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement Saturday.
Peace’s office said Radonjic had not been assigned an attorney as of Saturday.
Radonjic was arrested in October after traveling to Italy to captain a yacht in an international race, authorities said. Radonjic was supposed to be the skipper of the 24-meter Maxi Jena at the Barcolana, one the world’s largest sailing races, when he was taken into custody, according to the magazine InTrieste.
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U.S. authorities have not released the names of other people who were indicted and said they were not in U.S. custody.
If convicted, Radonjic faces a mandatory minimum of 10 years’ imprisonment and up to life in prison.
His extradition comes just days after authorities announced another international drug trafficker with a colorful nickname was arrested. Earlier this month, a major cocaine network — led by a smuggler known as “The Professor” — was busted in Europe.
Last month, European police forces arrested around 40 people in a years-long operation to bust a major drug smuggling ring, leading to the seizure of eight tons of cocaine, and Europol said many members of the network were, like Radonjic, from countries in the Balkans.