"Radulović accused only for being friends with Dačić"

"Radulović accused only for being friends with Dačić"

"Why has Miša Radulović been accused," Šarić said at the Special Court in Belgrade on Friday after asking to speak, and then added: "Just because he was friends with Dačić."

"The fact that he (Dačić) now renounced him, that's another thing. Radulović was charged only for that reason. This is completely a political process," Šarić claimed.

Radulović, who is still a fugitive, is accused of involvement in the smuggling of cocaine from Argentina to western Europe, while Šarić was indicted as the organizer of the group, which numbered several dozen members responsible for the purchase and transport of cocaine from several countries of Latin America.

Dačić, now Serbia's foreign minister and first deputy prime minister, and formerly interior minister and premier, confirmed that he had meetings with Radulović, but denied he was aware of his criminal activities.

Commenting on the testimony given by protected witnesses, Šarić said those were "extracted," but that the police did not succeed when it came to him. "Neither politics nor the police managed to break me," Šarić said, alluding that he had been offered "the same status."

The defendant once again said that "Zoki" was not his alias - as claimed by the prosecution based on intercepted text messages exchanged by the members of his criminal group. He also repeated that "the whole process was a setup done by a certain police general Papaya," whose identity, however, he still refuses to reveal.

According to Šarić, although the prosecutor argued that he was in fact "Zoki" - the only proof they had for the claim was "the drunk, corrupt cop Papaya".

"Papaya has totally poisoned the prosecutor. Here I challenge the prosecutor to put forward any paperwork, evidence, from Brazil, Argentina, Italy or the DEA. There is none. It's all fabricated by the sick Papaya, who presented me to the world as being such a person," claimed Šarić.

After his address to the court today, the panel of judges continued to listen to the intercepts messages of the crime group members.

In April 2013, the Special Court in Belgrade started a consolidated trial of Šarić's group on six counts of the indictment that covered the smuggling of a total of over 5.7 tons of cocaine in 2008 and 2009.

Šarić also faces a separate trial, where he is accused of laundering EUR 22 million in Serbia by using his drug money to buy companies, land, and hotels.

This Montenegrin-born suspected drug lord who holds Serbian citizenship surrendered to the Serbian authorities in March after four and a half years on the run.