TIRANA, July 7 – A Shkodra court has charged a 20-year-old man in police custody accused of killing of two Czech tourists who were gunned down late last Friday in a mountainous area in northwestern Albania.
Sokol Fran Mjacaj, a repeat offender, faces life in prison, if found guilty. He turned himself in to police following a massive manhunt.
Police said he had confessed to the killing as an armed robbery gone wrong.
The tourists were killed on a rural road between Theth and Shkodra in the Dukagjin region.
The victims were a 27-year-old man who worked as a firefighter and a 36-year-old woman.
Michal Svatoš and Anna Kosinová were both from the Chzech Republic’s Plzeň region.
Mjacaj’s confession to police was leaked to local media. In it he said he shot the man after he tried to grab his automatic weapon and the woman “because she was crying the whole time.”
Police noted he had a chilling calm demeanor as he spoke of his crime and added a language barrier might have contributed to the escalation of violence.
The charged murderer had stopped their four-wheel drive off-road Nissan trying to rob the tourists and told the man to keep driving looking for a more desolate area.
Mjacaj had only recently been released from prison, where he had served a sentences in relation to a killing when he was a teenager and a robbery.
Albanian Interior Minister Saimir Tahiri said the suspect should have not been allowed to go free.
At the age of 14, the alleged murderer committed a robbery that resulted in the death of a 13-young boy, in association with two other men.
Mjacaj cooperated with authorities to get the other two harsher sentences and to find the victim’s body.
He was sentenced to 10 years in jail, but it was reduced to five on appeal. He served only three due to his young age in a detention facility for minors.
He went free and was then again jailed for another robbery. He had left prison in April.
The killings caused public outrage in Albania, including many calls for the return of the death penalty, which Albania has abolished as part of its bid to join the European Union.
People all over Albania expressed their sympathy with the victims. They lit candles and laid flowers outside the Czech Embassy in Tirana and sent letters of sympathy.
They also held rallies in Shkodra and Tirana in support of the victims.
Mountainous northern Albania and Theth in particular are popular with Czech tourists despite a history of danger for the country’s citizens
In 2001, three Czech students disappeared in this area. They have never been found. Last year, another Czech tourist died in Albania in a rafting accident.
Despite these incidents, tourism officials insist Albania remains safer for foreign visitors than the average European country.
But this latest incident has galvanized public opinion and put a lot of pressure on police and authorities to increase presence in rural tourist sites.
Albanian authorities gave the case an absolute priority as they tried to protect the safety image of Albania for international tourists.
