Scandal of deportation scheme the place solely EIGHT Albanian criminals have been despatched residence – at a value of £530k EACH whereas gang rapists are nonetheless right here: Special investigation by Paul Bracchi

Ibrahim Bezati subjected his victim – in the words of the judge who jailed him for 17 years – to ‘every woman’s worst nightmare’.

The 23-year-old was kidnapped from Bedford town centre one night, imprisoned in a nearby flat, forced to take cocaine then raped by Bezati and two fellow Albanians.

After being held for three hours, and going into ‘survival mode’, she managed to escape and flag down a member of the public who contacted the police and her family. ‘I need Mum,’ she said pitifully when a friend called her at the police station.

But this is not just a story about what happened to the victim but what didn’t happen after Bezati appeared in the dock at Luton Crown Court in July 2022.

Only the previous year, the then Conservative Government signed a ‘groundbreaking’ agreement to send home hundreds of the most dangerous convicted Albanian criminals in exchange for UK support to help ‘modernise’ the prison system in the Balkans country where they would complete their full sentence. Tirana received £4.3 million to pay for the refurbishment.

Ibrahim Bezati, in his late 30s, was understood to have been identified for removal under the much-vaunted ‘prisoner transfer agreement’, which came into force in May 2023.

Two years on, he is still here, which is not surprising in the circumstances because only eight of the 200 Albanians – including killers, sexual predators and drug dealers – who, we were told, would be deported, have actually been returned to their homeland.

Just eight – despite more than £4 million, to repeat, being spent on upgrading the local prison system courtesy of the British taxpayer. The maths is not hard to work out: £4.3 million divided by eight equals £537,500. That’s how much, in simple terms, it has effectively cost to transfer each of the ‘Albanian Eight’ back to the Balkans.

At a time when the country is struggling to defend itself, winter fuel payments for pensioners are being cut and a row rages over welfare reforms, many will find the outlay for the Albanian ‘prisoner transfer agreement’ particularly egregious.

‘Taxpayers will be apoplectic at the astonishing amount of cash handed over to Albania with little in return,’ said William Yarwood, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance. ‘It is infuriating enough that Britain is having to effectively bribe a foreign nation to take back its criminal citizens, yet it is clear they are taking the sterling but not the subjects.’

The decision to ‘bribe’ the authorities in Tirana was taken by the Tories – but Labour have been in power for nine months, so no party emerges from the mess with much credit.

The debacle perhaps epitomises our chronically dysfunctional deportation system (every overseas prisoner given a sentence of more than 12 months should be automatically sent home), already hamstrung by human rights legislation and ruthlessly exploited by ‘loophole’ lawyers making money out of legal aid.

The latest revelation, confirmed by the Ministry of Justice, simply adds fuel to this fire.

Currently, there are 1,270 Albanians held in jails in England and Wales, the most from any foreign country.

Ironic as it may seem with hindsight, the transfer initiative was unveiled as a financially expedient way of clearing some of the most serious offenders – those serving more than four years – from our overcrowded prisons.

The cost of imprisonment in Albania is a fraction of those in the UK: £32 per prisoner per day (which amounts to nearly £12,000 a year) against £102 per prisoner per day in England and Wales (which amounts to nearly £40,000 a year). It meant, for example, that it would have cost the Ministry of Justice around £130,000 to keep Ibrahim Bezati behind bars in the Balkans instead of the £500,000, allowing for inflation, it is almost certainly going to cost to complete his sentence in Britain.

Most inmates are freed after serving two-thirds of their jail term, 11 years in Bezati’s case.

The arrangement would have made financial sense if more Albanians facing lengthy jail time had been returned as promised or millions hadn’t been handed over to Tirana, an example if ever there was one of the dubious pragmatism of realpolitik.

The money has paid for a fleet of 15 electric cars and 22 minibuses, the training of prison wardens, extra security and improving conditions in jails.

At the moment, though, only one country seems to have benefited from the deal – and it isn’t Britain. Like Ibrahim Bezati, another Albanian, Klodjan Samurri, should reportedly have been on a flight out of the UK and, like Bezati, he is believed to be still very much in the UK.

He was jailed for seven years in 2022 for raping a woman who was enjoying a night out with friends in North London.

She and her friends met Samurri at a pizza restaurant and they all went back to her flat.

‘Boundaries were set’, the court heard, and it was made clear to the men that they couldn’t ‘stay the night’. The victim later went to bed, put on an eye mask and went to sleep. She woke up to find Samurri having sex with her.

A third Albanian predator, Koci Selamaj, was also on the deportation list, according to coverage at the time the scheme was announced.

It is unclear if he is one of the eight who have been sent back, however. The family of Sabina Nessa, 28, the primary schoolteacher he murdered, did not wish to speak about the matter when contacted. Selamaj attacked Sabina from behind in a park in South-East London in 2021, striking her over the head with a metal traffic triangle before strangling her and removing some of her clothing.

He was jailed for a minimum of 36 years then a further four and a half years in Broadmoor for stabbing a prison officer with a porcelain shard from the toilet he smashed up in his cell.

It would cost in excess of £1.3million to keep him incarcerated in Broadmoor for another 34 years, if he is still here, but only in the region of £400,000 if he is serving his time in the Balkans.

The difference starkly highlights just how expensive the failure to deport more Albanian killers, gangsters and rapists has proved to be.

‘A few bad apples’, says Albania’s prime minister Edi Rama, should not define his country and it should not need saying that the vast majority of Albanians are not criminals.

Nevertheless, those ‘bad apples’ now control much of the cocaine and marijuana markets in the UK fuelled by extreme violence, exploitation and human trafficking.

Many Albanians who arrive in the UK answer adverts offering passage across the Channel and subsequently end up being put to work on cannabis farms or forced into prostitution.

Balkan Insight, the website of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, has highlighted the prevalence of such ads on anonymous TikTok accounts.

‘Go to England. £4,000. With boats. Every day,’ is an example of the kind of flyers that flood social media, Balkan Insight revealed.

Another informed potential ‘customers’: ‘Departures everyday. We can take families also. You come today and leave tomorrow. We are the first and the best [for boats].’

Yet, despite the proliferation of Albanian organised crime groups, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) was unable to tell us why so few Albanians have been deported under the prisoner transfer agreement in the past two years. The department is now ‘reviewing the operation’ to see if more of the very worst offenders can be sent home.

Red tape because of administrative delays in Albania is said to have hamstrung the process, which is frustrating officials in Whitehall, apparently.

Considering Tirana has received more than £4million, it is an unacceptable situation, if true.

Either way, the MoJ stressed the payment to fund improvements to the Albanian prison service was not made to comply with the requirements of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), but was simply a condition of the deal negotiated at the time.

Hard to see how, in the circumstances, the terms could have been less favourable to Britain. ‘Prisoner transfer agreements are just one way in which we get foreign national criminals out of our jails,’ a government spokesperson stressed.

Another is through what is known as the early removal scheme (ERS) for foreign national offenders (FNOs), that is anyone who is not a British citizen who is given a custodial sentence for any offence.

‘Since taking office, this government has deported 2,925 foreign offenders, a 21 per cent increase on the same time last year,’ the spokesman added.

Of those, 1,610 were Albanian FNOs, the Mail has learned. The statistics do not tell the full story.

Firstly, they were freed up to 18 months before their earliest release date and were not subject to further imprisonment after being deported, which means they could have served less time than, say, than a British prisoner would have done for the same offence.

As a result, critics argue, the deterrent to commit crimes in the first place is reduced.

Secondly, the FNOs were eligible for a £1,500 resettlement grant, administered by the Home Office, which was paid in cash and uploaded on to a card.

Family members – spouse or partner or child under 18 – could also have applied for the same grant and their flights were paid for them as well.

There was one more benefit. An additional £500 would have been paid to ‘vulnerable FNOs’, including those with mental health issues, with the ‘merits of each application judged case by case’.

How much did it all cost? The information is not published – of course it isn’t – and can only be obtained through a Freedom of Information request.

But the Government insists the scheme is cost-effective by ensuring foreign nationals leave the UK promptly, thus avoiding prolonged detention or lengthy legal appeals. Pensioners facing cuts to their winter fuel payments might disagree.

Thirdly, although grants were conditional on them agreeing never to return to Britain, there are countless examples showing that they do. Ardit Binaj, for example, was freed just six months into a two-and-half year jail sentence in 2016 and deported.

Within months he had re-entered the country. In 2023, he won his appeal to remain, citing his right to family life under Article 8 of the ECHR.

By then, Binaj, 32, had a son with his Lithuanian girlfriend.

Other ‘returnees’ were recently interviewed by the BBC after stepping off deportation flights at Tirana airport. ‘It’s not a problem for me,’ said one young Albanian. ‘I’ll go back whenever I want.’

Paying Albanian criminals to go back, on the one hand, and paying the Albanian government for (not) taking them back on the other.

There can’t be many who don’t think taxpayers are being shamefully short-changed.

Additional reporting: Tim Stewart