ONLY eight Albanian prisoners have been sent home to serve their sentences in an £8million scheme meant to return 200 killers, rapists and drug barons.
The hardened criminals were among some of those due to be returned from the 1,200-strong Albanian population in British prisons – but only 67 lags have been nominated to go.
Dorian Pirija was jailed for his role in the execution of father-of-two Hamawand Ali Hussain[/caption]
Erald Mema was found guilty of a conspiracy to supply cocaine[/caption]
The two-year scheme, launched in 2023, had been set to double the number of foreign offenders deported to 200.
Yet sources said just eight of the 67 listed have actually been flown back to Tirana.
Hold-ups are said to be caused by lengthy administrative delays, which are frustrating Whitehall officials.
The repatriation plan sees the UK pay Albania an expected £4million a year to take back its most violent prisoners.
The original deal included 12 murderers, eight rapists and more than 100 guilty of drugs and fiream offences.
One lag sent back to Albania was drug kingpin Klodjan Copja, who was flown back last March to serve his 17-year sentence in an Albanian jail.
And we can also reveal that Erald Mema, who got 25 years in 2018 for his leading role in an “enormous” cocaine smuggling operation, has also been returned to Albania.
He is believed to have chosen to go back because the Albanian parole board could grant him an earlier release than he’d be entitled to in Britain.
Both are said to be held in Drenova Prison, Albania’s most secure jail, where they will remain until they serve half their sentence in custody, as they would have done in the UK.
The deal saves around two-thirds of the £109 daily cost of keeping them locked up here, while a cell costs just £32 a day in Albania.
But many more prisoners have not been sent home despite being identified for removal.
They include Ibrahim Bezati, 38, who falsely imprisoned and raped a defenceless drugged woman in September 2021.
The “dangerous sexual predator” was jailed for 17 years and is still due to serve most of it in Albania as part of the swap deal.
A judge told Bezati that he had put his victim through “every woman’s worst nightmare” and “treated her like she was less than human”.
Another waiting to be deported is convicted killer Dorian Pirija, 36, who was jailed for 19 years in 2021 after plotting to kill a rival drug dealer in Hartlepool.
Hamawand Ali Hussein, 30, was blasted in the head with a sawn-off shotgun in 2019 after Pirjia planned to have him killed to expand his drug dealing patch.
Pirjia, of Bolton, Gtr. Mancs., was cleared of murder but convicted of manslaughter.
Rapist Klodjan Samurri, 31, is also slated to be flown back after attacking a drunk sleeping woman.
He was caught when her friends saw the thug buttoning up his jeans as she begged for him to leave.
But Samurri lied and said she had given consent, telling her pals: “Yeah, yeah, all good”.
Sentencing him to seven years in prison, Old Bailey Judge Bernard Richmond told him: “You targeted a vulnerable woman in her own bed.
“This was in every single way imaginable an invasion of her privacy.”
Most of the transfer hold-ups are said to be due to backlogs in the Albanian court system, which must recognise a British sentence before a transfer can be completed.
A source said: “The process of recognising UK judgments in the courts in Albania is taking time due to a huge backlog at courts across the country.”
Figures show there are 1,273 Albanians locked up in British prisons, more than any other foreign nationality.
Last week, we revealed how Albanian mafia cop killer Maksim Cela, 59, had been released on bail while he fights deportation.
Government sources stressed the UK only paid Albania part of the £8million each time a criminal was returned.
The cash will be used to pay for refurbishing Albanian prisons, extra security, workshops, rehabilitation equipment and the training of warders.
More than 1,000 Albanians, including small boat migrants, have been returned to their home state under other joint agreements since 2022.
Some have also accepted £1,500 facilitated removal payments to go home early if they promise not to return.
A Ministry of Justice spokeswoman said: “Prisoner Transfer Agreements are just one way in which we get foreign criminals out of our jails.
“Since taking office, this Government has deported 2,925 foreign offenders, a 21 per cent increase on the same time last year.
“We’ve recently announced that we will deploy specialist staff to 80 jails in order to speed up the removal of prisoners who have no right to be in this country.”
Cop killer’s asylum win
By THOMAS GODFREY
TERRORIST Maksim Cela is among a growing number of Albanian criminals living in the UK.
The Sun unmasked the mafia cop killer, 57, after a 23-month legal fight.
A judge had awarded him anonymity while he fought deportation on human rights grounds.
Evil Cela, left, has already cost taxpayers thousands fighting removal despite arriving here with a fake passport.
He came after serving half of a 25-year life sentence for murder and terrorism in Albania.
His asylum claim was rejected by a judge at the First Tier immigration tribunal.
But a separate claim — that his life was at risk from rival gangs if he returned to Albania — was controversially accepted because of the hated European convention on human rights.
The Home Secretary appealed against the ruling, which was subsequently found to have been an “error of law”.
The Upper Tier Tribunal must now decide on whether Cela can stay with a two-day hearing from March 31.
New figures suggest one in 36 Albanian-born men living in the UK are in jail, more than any other country.
Albania’s share of foreign prisoners has also soared seven-fold in the last 15 years.
