London Life

Last week a court in the Albanian capital, Tirana, sentenced two men to 21 years in prison each for a murder committed in London.  As Kurt Barling explains it’s an example of greater cooperation between the Metropolitan Police and overseas law enforcement agencies, bringing new meaning to the phrase “the long arm of the law”.

On January 14th 2002 the usually calm suburb of Palmers Green erupted into open gang warfare.   Since early 2001 a traditional meeting venue, the Fox public house, had become a public venue where drug gangs would come to carry out transactions involving heroin and other class A drugs.  

It was a convenient place to come, with easy road access to the North Circular and in between rival drug territories in Enfield and Haringey.   It was sufficiently far away from Haringey where larger narcotics distributors, like the Baybasin clan were operating, it was felt to be a safe and convenient place to carry on business.

Abdullah Baybasin is a Turkish Kurd.  Before he was convicted last year of drug offences a new group of Albanian criminals had started to become involved in the heroin trade.  

The Albanians had started to get a reputation as hard men and some of the heroin smuggled into the UK was coming through Albania.  

One of the by-products of the Kosovan conflict was that some of those caught up in that war ended up finding it difficult to adjust to a more sedate lifestyle in suburban London.

On that Monday evening a drugs dispute spilled out onto Green Lanes from the public house and three men were chased by armed men.  Whilst horrified passers-by sought cover several shots were fired. 

Two men were critically injured, whilst a third man, 22 year old Edmund Gullhaj was pronounced dead at the scene.  The last time Pelliper Close had seen anything remotely as dramatic was nearly 30 years earlier when a row of Alms Houses burned to the ground.

The shooting was no accident.  Three gunshot wounds to the head meant the police felt convinced they were dealing with an execution.    The investigating team hit problems immediately as the surviving men had a fear induced mental block on who was behind the shootings.

Undeterred the lead investigator Detective Chief Inspector Chris Tolley, slowly began to piece together the story of a dispute which had turned nasty between rival Albanian gangs.   One of the key hurdles in the investigation was to remain the willingness of certain Albanian criminal gangs to settle their differences amongst themselves.

Victim Edmund Gullhaj

By using mobile phone technology the police team were able to establish that the likely perpetrators had fled across Europe to their native Albania and there the trail went cold.

In the meantime Tolley’s team kept gathering evidence to form as complete a picture as possible of the circumstances surrounding this particularly violent incident.

The two principal suspects Ermal Sinani, 24 and Florian Metalla, 19 had returned to their home towns and presumably believed they were beyond the reach of the British authorities. 

It was not long, however, before they both came to the notice of the Albanian police for criminal activities in Albania.  They were arrested for separate offences in November 2004.

Tolley’s team had meanwhile tipped off the Albanian authorities about their interest in the two men, so when they were both separately brought into custody the call came through from Albania that the two men had been identified.   In the past that would have been the end of it because there is no extradition treaty between Albania and the United Kingdom.

They hadn’t banked on the persistence of the Chief Albanian prosecutor Ardian Visha who had been fighting to prevent blood feuds, started overseas, spilling back into Albania.   Criminal gangs settling feuds murderously was in danger of turning Albania into the murder centre of Europe.

Visha proposed a unique arrangement to the British authorities which would allow evidence gathered in Britain to be used as evidence in a criminal trial in the central court in Tirana.   The murder of Gullhaj was the first case which the authorities on both sides sought to test this novel approach.

Tolley’s team then set about the painstaking task of preparing the evidence, as they would for the criminal prosecutor in England. 

Only this time they had to prepare briefs in English and Albanian.

In 2005 after a three year investigation the police team eventually went to Albania to interview the main suspects and present their almost finalised documents outlining the evidence to the chief prosecutor.

Florian Metalla (2nd left) & Ermal Sinani in court

By now charged with other offences Sinani and Metalla remained in custody and were soon charged with murder based on the evidence presented by Tolley’s team.

At this point the Metropolitan Police’s involvement in the case became one of international spectator.  For them the key question was could they secure convictions in a foreign court with evidence that they had gathered thousands of miles away.

In fact so thorough had the team’s casework been that the two men, despite initially claiming no knowledge of the Palmers Green shootings, turned their pleas to guilty.

After a two year wait, at the end of last week, the verdicts and sentences were finally passed down in the Albanian courts. Chris Tolley was in court to witness the conclusion of what had become the longest investigation of his career.  

The case showed just how determined the authorities both here and in Albania are in building relationships to ensure that serious crime does not go unpunished. 

Their collective view is that justice was seen to be done by transferring the jurisdiction for the prosecution to the Albanian authorities.

Chris Tolley was blunt in his assessment of what his team had achieved saying he wanted to re-assure the Albanian community in particular that the Met would “pursue offenders regardless of how long and how far that might take us”.

By stretching the long arm of the law across jurisdictions like these the Met have shown just how far, far is.

Ermal Sinani and Florian Metalla, both Albanian citizens, were both sentenced to 21 years for murder and two attempted murders in London.  A little bit of policing history.

The Fox public house is now under entirely new management.  The drug gangs have been banished and it has returned to the family oriented venue it had been for many years prior to their Albanian connection.