TIRANA, Nov. 11, 2023 – Albanian authorities have announced plans to initiate extradition proceedings to bring home one of the country’s most wanted men and an internationally notorious drug kingpin, Dritan Rexhepi, following his recent arrest by Turkish police in an Istanbul hideout.
Albania, where Rexhepi has been convicted of murder in absentia, will contend with Italy and possibly Ecuador for his extradition, as there are several INTERPOL Red Notices for his arrest. Italian authorities have reportedly already filed the necessary extradition paperwork.
Rexhepi, who had eluded authorities since his escape from an Italian prison in 2011, faces serious charges, including drug trafficking.
The collaborative effort leading to his arrest involved the INTERPOL as well as Turkish and Italian police, the international police agency said in a statement, adding the arrest signifies the end of a prolonged manhunt and underscores the efficacy of international cooperation in combating criminal activities that transcend borders.
Investigative journalist Artan Hoxha has shed light on Rexhepi’s prominence in the global drug trafficking landscape in the Albanian media, noting that Rexhepi, though not the most lucrative figure in the drug trade, was the most wanted Albanian globally due to his representation in the world of crime.
“Dritan Rexhepi was not the most wanted Albanian in Albania, but the most wanted Albanian globally. This is because of what he represented. We are talking about criminal activity investigated on a global scale. Albania has not reached these levels,” Hoxha told an Albanian television talk show.
Born as Gramoz Rexhepi in a village in Vlora County, Albania’s economic struggles and criminal violence in the 1990s shaped Rexhepi, according to profiles of him in local and international media. At just 19, in 1999, he carried out a contract hit in Tirana, killing a policeman and another man.
Arrested in January 2006 by Albanian police, he escaped that same evening through a defective door at a Durres police station and was convicted in absentia of murder by an Albanian court. He has been appealing that conviction through his lawyers ever since with no success.
His Albanian escape marked the first of three jailbreaks as European police pursued him on drug-trafficking charges. In Italy, he sawed through cell bars and escaped; in Belgium, he climbed over a wall. In a 2014 arrest in Ecuador, he was caught with over 600 pounds of cocaine, allying with a local trafficker linked to Colombian and Mexican cartels.
The organization he leads is known as Kompania Bello. Investigative journalists who have followed his case have noted that he has been able to travel around the world with fake passports, including allegedly to Albania, but his luck ran out in a visit to Turkey, where he had entered the country with a Colombian passport that was traced by Italian police who then forwarded the info to their Turkish counterparts.
Cocaine from Rexhepi’s network was sent across the Atlantic on container ships to Dutch ports, then transported to Italy and other markets. As his group, Kompania Bello, expanded, they stamped their bricks with the brand “Bello” and sought recognition in the market. Rexhepi ruled with charisma and violence, ordering assaults and at least two murders, according to Italian police.
