The telegraph

Convicted Albanian murderer seeks asylum in UK over fear of being killed by victim’s family

A convicted murderer who entered the UK illegally with 68 other Albanian migrants seeks asylum because he fears he will be killed by the victim’s family in a “blood feud” if deported. The Albanian killer, who shot dead a mother in front of her eight-year-old daughter, also claims he is trafficked after being brought to the UK on a fishing boat for which smugglers charged up to £ 3,000 per head. , according to court documents viewed by The Telegraph. He has been detained since November as he fights against the eviction at the cost of several thousand pounds for the taxpayer. It has included at least three hearings in which his lawyers sought unsuccessfully to secure his release despite fears that he would flee and pose a threat to public safety. Court documents reveal that even while in detention in April, he was arrested in possession of a Class A drug which was tested and found to be cocaine. Official investigations have revealed that in addition to the 15-year sentence for murder, he was jailed for two years for theft in Albania and 16 months for another unknown offense. The murderer, who was granted anonymity by the court, was among 69 Albanians who were able to stay in the UK after a legal quagmire left them off criminal immigration charges. Their fishing boat was intercepted off the coast of East Anglia on November 18 as it sailed from Belgium in an operation involving 250 officers from the National Crime Agency, police and border forces. But plans to prosecute them for illegally entering the UK were dropped because when they were arrested they had not yet set foot on UK soil – a key criterion under the law. Two days after arriving in the UK, the Albanian killer applied for asylum and, according to court documents, also sent an email to the authority investigating modern slavery as part of a complaint for trafficking. However, it took almost a month before his trafficking allegations were revealed to UK authorities at the end of December. The 42-year-old said he was trafficked to Greece as a teenager, beaten and forced to work there. The Albanian also alleged that he was a victim of torture, claiming that he was intimidated and beaten by police while in prison. He served 12 of the 15 years he was sentenced for shooting the woman in front of her eight-year-old daughter at her home in a village in central Albania. He arrived in Great Britain after crossing Germany, Sweden and then Belgium before taking the fishing boat for the United Kingdom. The case comes as the government prepares to revise asylum laws and crack down on illegal migrants by facilitating and faster deportation. A government source said, “Our new immigration plan means criminals like this will never make it into the country and will speed up the removal of those who shouldn’t be here.” As the Albanian, known only as AM, was detained before the end of the transition period, more lenient EU deportation laws require the UK to demonstrate that he poses a real, present and serious. New post-Brexit immigration laws which came into effect on December 31st ban any EU citizen sentenced to at least one year in prison from the UK. Under the new rules, asylum seekers will also be required to submit all their claims at once, rather than making several successive appeals.