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Xhevdet Plaku, leader of a criminal group, escapes from prison

Politiko 2025-01-24 13:33:50

Xhevdet Plaku, leader of a criminal group, escapes from prison

One of the most well-known names in organized crime, Xhevdet Plaku, escaped on Thursday morning from Barcaglione prison in Ancona, Italy, while facing charges of two murders and being the leader of an international drug criminal group.

Xhevdet Plaku was a model prisoner in Ancona and would have completed his sentence in a few months. This had enabled him three months ago to benefit from the regime provided for by article 21 of the Prison Code. Which means: work outside, unaccompanied.

According to Italian media, yesterday morning at around 8:30, the Albanian went out to empty the trash cans at the barracks. A daily routine that seemed quite ordinary, but which turned into a, so far, perfect escape.

At 11:30, when prison officers conducted a routine check, Plaku did not respond to the call. The alarm was immediately activated and all law enforcement agencies began searching for him.

The Italian police have launched an operation to track him down, searching fields, fields, abandoned houses and paths around the Barcaglione prison, but so far there has been no trace of him. For investigators, everything points to a planned escape. The old man seems to have been waiting for the right moment and is used to being on the run: he knows how to move, how to blend in and this is worrying. Surely there was someone outside who was ready to help him. Perhaps a hidden car near the prison, or a contact network that was activated at the right moment.

Who is Xhevdet Plaku?

Xhevdet Plaku is no ordinary criminal. He has a name in the underworld. He has two murders behind him. The first occurred in 2000, when he killed Sali Rapi in Borghetto Santo Spirito, in the province of Savona: a cold-blooded execution, a bullet to the head for a fellow countryman, as part of a gang feud.

The second murder occurred three years later, in Durrës, where he had returned to live. Plaku was extradited from Italy to Albania because he was suspected of being the author of the murder of Saimir Sina on June 11, 2004, an event for which he was initially sentenced to 21 years and 6 months in prison. The murder occurred in neighborhood No. 15, in the Spitalla area, all because Sina, knowing that Plaku had a girlfriend, citizen Nertila K., and taking advantage of her personal acquaintance with this girl, had proposed to take her illegally to Italy, with the aim of reuniting her with her lover.

The girl accepted this proposal and, in July 2001, Sina, together with another person, took Nertila to Italy, changing the destination they had agreed on. The girl was sent to Rome, where she was forced to work as a prostitute for them. However, the young woman managed to return to Albania in December 2001 and filed a criminal complaint for the above incident. For trafficking the young woman, the Durrës Court sentenced Saimir Sina to 1 year and 6 months, while Plaku, when he found out what had happened to his girlfriend, decided to take revenge. He had kept the victim under surveillance and only 3 days after she was released from prison, shot her to death near his apartment in the Durrës Hospital. 22-year-old Saimir Sina was shot three times, killing him instantly, while all of the victim's family members, including his minor daughter, witnessed the murder. Almost 10 years after the incident, after numerous court proceedings, on February 22, 2013, the old man was released due to lack of evidence.

He then fled the country, where he built his drug trafficking "empire". He was the leader of an Albanian criminal group based in Italy that trafficked narcotics from the Netherlands and Belgium, a gang that reportedly divided drug packages based on quality. Quality that also distinguished the names where the purest cocaine was 'Hermes' and then 'Lacoste', 'G4', 'Rolls Royce' and 'Play Boy' for the lowest. In this activity, according to the Italian police, he used 25 different identities to avoid being caught by controls and led the organization through the many trips he made to Amsterdam.

He had recently been arrested for drug trafficking-related offenses and was serving a two-year sentence, almost at the end of it.

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