TIRANA, Feb.1 – The Serious Crimes Court has sentenced to 15 years in prison Italian pilot Giorgio Riformato for his role in an international marijuana smuggling attempt from Albania to Italy via a small plane about two years ago. Riformato was arrested in May 2014 soon after his Piper aircraft crashlanded on the beach of Divjaka in southwestern Albania.
At the time, police also arrested an Albanian citizen in possession of 460 kilos of marijuana in the vicinity of the plane’s crash. According to the prosecution, the drugs were meant to be loaded on Riformato’s plane and then smuggled to Italy. The Italian has kept denying charges throughout the process, however prosecutors were able to convince the judge to give him a 15-year sentence.
Testimony from other defendants in the same case also links Riformato with the international drug trafficking scheme, prosecutors say. The process against the Italian pilot has been held separately from that of the other six defendants in the case, who altogether received a sentence of 47 years imprisonment in a separate verdict.
