Speaking in April last year, Britain’s ambassador to Albania, Duncan Norman, said “60 to 70 per cent” of 726 Albanian inmates at that time in Britain were from these three northern counties.

Deeply impoverished, the region has become a rich recruitment ground for the Albanian crime gangs that now dominate the cocaine market in Britain.

“They left like everybody else,” Dema’s mother, Kujtime, said of her sons. “They told them there’s work and they paid to get there,” she told BIRN. Eight of the nine convicted in Dema’s case were in the UK illegally, the BBC reported.

Small group with big impact

Graphic: BIRN

British authorities continue to be concerned about the role played by Albanian crime gangs in the UK drug trade.

In June 2017, the annual report of the UK National Crime Agency identified Albanian gangs as exerting “considerable control” over drug trafficking in the country.

“It is a small (group) in number, but big in impact,” the Agency’s deputy director, Matthew Horne, told the BBC.

The 2017 report showed that criminals from the Balkans were forming “direct relationships” with Latin American cocaine suppliers.

In 2017, there were 726 Albanian nationals in British prisons, compared to 154 in 2010.

Contacts are key to finding new Albanian youngsters willing to work illegally in the UK.

“The first one who left was Mevlan Dema; he is part of our clan,” said Kujtime. “My sons told me that they secured jobs at a car wash there. Like everybody else, my sons paid and left, I don’t know how.”

Mevlan Dema was arrested along with Izmir and Kadri Dema in 2016 as the accused ringleader of the drug gang.

Mevlan was 34 years old at the time, but most of the gang were in their twenties. In a television show broadcast by British ITV looking at the work of the Brighton police, the gang was described as likely “controlling the drugs supply” in the city; some members, it said, displayed “potential for a really significant level of violence.”

Pellumb Nako, the former director of the border and migration department at the Albanian State Police, told BIRN: “The United Kingdom remains a destination for Albanian youth in the north [of Albania] as they have their connections there, they have people there.”

“It is precisely this diaspora that provides support for these nationals” in entering Britain, he said.

Police sources in Albania say Albanians pay up to £10,000 to be smuggled into Britain.

Senior police officers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said such crime gangs often targeted young Albanians as recruits because of the likelihood British courts will be more lenient if they are caught.

“Criminal groups usually utilize youths, who take the risk because of the lighter punitive measures,” said one officer.

‘He left as soon as he came back’

Photo: BIRN

Kadri and Izmir Dema were both sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison, according to media reports.

Under Britain’s Early Removal Scheme, foreign nationals are sent home up to nine months before the halfway point in their prison sentence.

If prisoners agree to be removed voluntary, they can receive up to £1,500 from the UK government.

It is not known for certain whether the brothers were sent back under the scheme, but it appears possible given the timing.

Photos uploaded on now-deleted Facebook profiles in their names place the brothers in Tirana and Patin in the second half of 2017, when they would otherwise still have been serving time in Britain under their full sentence.

Kadri declined to speak to BIRN. Kujtime said Izmir had returned to Britain.

“He is in England; he left as soon as he came back,” she told BIRN. “He says he is OK and we talk time after time on Skype.”

‘Abandoned and impoverished’

Graphic: BIRN

Patin’s nearest town, Klos, is just down the road built under King Zog I, whose 11-year reign ended in Italian occupation in 1939 before Communist dictator Enver Hoxha turned Albania into a Stalinist state after World War Two.

Locals complain bitterly about street lighting and water supplies. Most residents are elderly, surviving on cash sent home by children who emigrated.

“Be it because of the lack of road infrastructure, or the lack of drinking water and irrigation, this region is abandoned and impoverished,” said Basir Cupa, mayor of the Klos municipality.

In addition to the Early Removal Scheme, the British and Albanian governments signed an agreement in 2013 under which Albanian inmates in British prisons can be repatriated to serve out the rest of their sentence in their homeland.

But the uptake has been low. Latest figures from the UK’s parliament show that just 24 Albanian inmates have been  transferred under the agreement.

Norman, the British ambassador, said the way sentences were ‘converted’ from one legal system to another meant some prisoners could face spending even longer behind bars.

“We are working closely with the Albanian government to amend the agreement and end what many prisoners see as an unfair practice,” Norman told BIRN.

Call for asset seizures

The ambassador has been vocal about Britain’s concerns over the growth of Albanian crime gangs on British soil, saying in October 2017 that the governments have discussed the seizure of assets invested in Albania. “There needs to be good cooperation with Albanian authorities,” he said at the time.

Albania’s interior ministry did not reply to BIRN questions.

The European Union, which Albania wants to join, has been critical in the past of a perceived failure by Albania to go after the assets of organised crime groups and a preoccupation with apprehending the footsoldiers, not the bosses.

Fabian Zhilla, a lecturer on law and ethics at the Canadian Institute of Technology in Tirana and an expert on organised crime in the Western Balkans, said the fact such gangs were targeting young, disaffected Albanians represented a threat to the country.

“Many of them are not recognized as criminals in Albania,” he told BIRN, “but rather as emigrants who bring money and invest.”

This investigation is produced by BIRN as a part of Paper Trail to Better Governance project.