Two convicted Albanians flee abroad

TIRANA, July 11 – Two Albanian immigrants have become the center of attention in their resident countries as a result of criminal activity.
The British Daily Mail wrote last Sunday that an investigation found that an Albanian man has yet to be extradited to his homeland where he faces a 26-year prison sentence for murder – despite being ordered out of the UK by the Home Secretary four years ago.
In a tactic employed with growing frequency, Vullnett Mucelli’s lawyers are using Article 6 of the Human Rights Act to argue that he would not be guaranteed a retrial if sent back. The 40-year-old, who was on Interpol’s Most Wanted list for five years before his arrest in 2007, was tried and convicted in absentia after he fled Albania on a false passport.
Mucelli shot a man to death with a sub-machine gun during a dispute about some gold coins in a Tirana flat 14 years ago. Escaping Albania before his trial, he lived in Greece and Italy until arriving in Britain in October 1998. He was granted asylum after claiming to be a refugee from war-torn Kosovo called Veiz Hali and obtained indefinite leave of stay, entitling him to benefits.
His extradition has been delayed.
Times Dispatch in the US reported that when long-sought international fugitive and convicted double murderer Marjan Rroku found himself face-to-face with Richmond federal marshal Kevin Connolly, he didn’t seem the least bit alarmed.
The former Albanian secret policeman knew he was wanted for killing a teenage girl and her mother in Albania nearly a decade earlier; which is why he had fled to the United States and started a new life under an assumed name. His false identity had served him well for the better part of a decade in hiding.
Since Rroku’s capture, the case has been progressing slowly in an immigration court in New York, where the U.S. government is trying to have Rroku returned to Albania to serve his sentence. While his attorney is fighting deportation, Rroku is being held in a detention facility in New York.