Albanian killer is freed to walk our streets again
After Mail revealed his extradition farce...
AN Albanian killer is back on our streets months after the Daily Mail exposed how he made a mockery of the extradition process.
In June this newspaper revealed that Ardian Rragami, 45, had returned to Britain four years after being forcibly sent home to serve a 15-year sentence for murder.
Within hours of the Home Office being asked to account for his presence here, immigration enforcement officers detained him pending deportation.
But now Rragami has been granted bail as he appeals the decision to boot him out a second time. A judge at the
Tracked down at his bolthole Proof that Britain’s lost the plot (cont) From the Mail, June 20
Birmingham Immigration and Asylum Chamber released him from ‘immigration detention’ on September 7.
Judge Esther Lagunju ordered him to wear an electronic tag, comply with an 8pm to 8am curfew and report weekly to officials.
Officials have refused to give details of his grounds for appeal. But many foreign criminals cite the right to a family life under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act when fighting deportation.
Rragami was pictured recently in the Essex town where he lives with his British wife and two children, smoking a cigarette seemingly without a care.
His case deepens the scandal of Albanian killers who fled to the UK, with the authorities now facing an increasingly costly battle to send Rragami home again.
Over the summer the Mail exposed two others who, like Rragami, posed as Kosovan refugees to enter Britain.
Saliman Barci, 41, a onelegged double killer convicted in his absence in Albania and given a 25- year sentence, is in a UK prison pending the outcome of his appeal against extradition.
And, following a Mail investigation, double murderer Avni Metra, 53 – also convicted in his absence in Albania and jailed for 25 years – was arrested in June after 18 years in hiding in the UK.
We tracked him down at his Hertfordshire bolthole and tipped off police. His extradition has since been ordered and he is also in prison as he pursues an appeal.
Rragami, posing as a Kos- ovan called Ardian Gashi, first sneaked into Britain after the murder of a man in northern Albania in 1998. The fugitive married a divorcee in London in 2002 and is said to have been granted asylum after Home Office officials believed his lies about being from Kosovo.
Interpol belatedly tracked him down in 2009 when he was working as a builder in Essex. In 2010 he was extradited to Albania to serve a 15-year term passed in his absence. But after appealing against the length of sentence, Rragami was freed in 2014 and returned to the UK to be reunited with his wife Chrysoulla Michaels, 46, and their two daughters.
In February last year he was detained by immigration officers but was conditionally released the follow- ing month due to a ‘leave to remain’ application. Last June after the Mail revealed he was back on the streets he was again detained.
The Home Office said Rragami has never been a British citizen and is liable for deportation based on his overseas convictions.
Asked why he is back on the streets, the Home Office said: ‘Where people have been released into the community in the vast majority of cases it was ordered by an immigration judge despite our strenuous objections.’ The Ministry of Justice said he has not been granted legal aid to fight deportation.
Rragami, from Shkoder in northern Albania, is living with his family in a smart housing association property. He and his wife declined to comment.