He Dragged a Customs Officer With His Car at Blace: A Getaway With a Kilo of Marijuana and a Knife

A Kosovo citizen forced his way through the Blace border crossing and, while fleeing, dragged the customs officer who tried to stop him. During the check, when the officers asked him to open the trunk, the driver suddenly took off and dragged the customs officer several metres. The officer suffered minor bodily injuries.

After a chase of about ten minutes, the border police and customs officers caught the suspect in Skopje. While fleeing, he threw out a bag of marijuana - forensic analysis showed it was around one kilogram. A cold weapon, a knife, was also found on him. The Customs Administration filed criminal charges for the unauthorised production and distribution of narcotic drugs and for obstructing an official in the performance of duty.

The scene sounds like something out of a film, yet it played out at a regular border crossing, in broad daylight, with a man who decided a vehicle was a better weapon than any other. The customs officer who stood in his way ended up injured - luckily only lightly. It could have been far worse, and the border is what stands, every day, between the drug smuggling and our streets.

Blace is no random crossing. It is one of the busiest traffic points between Kosovo and Macedonia, and precisely for that reason one of the most tempting for smuggling. Every intercepted shipment is a success, but every incident like this - where a man is ready to run over an officer just to get through - shows how thin the line is between control and chaos at the border itself.