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'The Sun': Albanian mobsters are being trained by Mexican killers...
The lifeless body of Bekim Halilaj, 29, was found hanging from a street sign on the outskirts of Brussels last month, a scene so macabre that passersby initially thought it was a Halloween decoration. But the horror soon turned to reality: it was a real murder, in the brutal style that has long accompanied Mexican drug gangs.
Halilaj, who eight years ago flooded the British city of Southampton with £4m worth of cocaine, is believed to have been executed by his criminal network after a major drug haul went missing. According to Belgian media, he was kidnapped, killed and then publicly displayed as a warning to anyone who “dare to harm us”.
Albanian security experts and criminologists confirm that this event is not an isolated case, but part of a wider phenomenon where Albanian criminal groups are adopting the violent techniques of Mexican cartels.
Ervin Karamuço, a criminology professor at the University of Tirana, says Albanian groups are being trained in “torture schools” by cartels known as “sicarios,” hitmen who now serve as consultants in the Albanian underworld. According to him, these tactics have become “very effective tools to impose control, fear and authority over the drug trade.”
Karamuço adds that representatives of Albanian groups, whom he calls "mafia ambassadors", have been staying in Latin America for years, not for tourism, but to create direct agreements with drug cartels and bring their "expertise" to Europe.
The examples are numerous. Victims of Albanian gangs in Britain have been tortured, burned alive in cars, had their nails removed, disappeared without a trace. The case of an Albanian man kidnapped in East London in 2022, who was held hostage for four days and tortured over a debt related to cannabis houses, is just one of many that shows the increasing brutality of these groups.
In another case, the body of Agim Hoxha, an Albanian drug trafficker, was found burned in a Mercedes car in Southampton in 2012. His killer, Arben Lleshi, was sentenced to 32 years in prison and then transferred to Albania, where in 2023 he was shot dead inside Peqin prison – another coded mafia “message”.
Halilaj's case is a culmination in the spiral of mafia violence that is spreading from Latin America to the heart of Europe, with the methods of Mexican cartels now being adopted by Albanian networks. Investigative journalist Artan Hoxha himself describes this as an "unprecedented level of brutality, which shows how far Albanian criminal organizations are willing to go to maintain control and fear."
And while such macabre scenes, such as hanging bodies, body parts in refrigerators or beheadings, were once reserved for Mexico, today they are taking place in Brussels, London or Amsterdam, turning drug trafficking into a silent but bloody war in the heart of Europe. /Adapted from “Pamphlet” by “ The Sun ”
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