NEW YORK — A Montenegro citizen nicknamed the “pirate of the unknown” has been extradited from Italy to New York City to face charges related to what U.S. authorities called an international drug ring that transported tons of cocaine around the world.
Milos Radonjic, 34, arrived in Brooklyn on Friday and will appear in federal court on Monday, according to federal prosecutors and officials from the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. A federal grand jury indicted him and several other individuals last year on charges of conspiracy and attempted violation of the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act.
According to court documents, 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. According to court documents, crew members of the ship knowingly participated in the alleged trafficking.
According to U.S. authorities, Radonjic and others had arranged to use speedboats at night to deliver drugs to cargo ships on the high seas near Colombia and Ecuador.
Radonjic and others also trafficked narcotics that “have contributed to the drug overdose and addiction crisis in the United States and around the world,” U.S. prosecutors wrote in a request to a federal judge to keep Radonjic in custody 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 we are committed to bringing those who violate the rule of law to justice,” Breon Peace, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement Saturday.
According to Peace’s office, no lawyer had been assigned to Radonjic as of Saturday.
Radonjic was arrested in October after traveling to Italy to captain a yacht in an international race, authorities said.
U.S. authorities did not release the names of the other people charged, saying they were not in U.S. custody.