THE story of how the Albanian mafia murdered one of their own on the Costa del Sol and tried to dump his body in a reservoir has now been revealed by the Policia Nacional.
The incident occurred last year on May 12 and began with the victim, 31, receiving a call from supposed ‘friends’ while dining with his partner in a Marbella restaurant. The couple were based in Benahavis and led a lavish lifestyle.
During the call, the ‘friends’ asked him to meet them at a well-known roadside diner in Puerto de la Torre, Malaga.
That day was the last time that the woman saw her partner, the victim, and investigations that followed were prompted by her reporting that he had disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
Initial enquiries led investigators to conclude that this was a non-voluntary disappearance.
The Policia Nacional went on to find evidence that the man had travelled to the aforementioned meeting point and got into a vehicle with two others. They all then headed towards a mountainous area near to a reservoir in Almogia.
After discovering this information, the investigations continued at the Casasola reservoir when a motorhome owner discovered a suspicious bag which authorities found to contain the body of a deceased individual bound with zip ties.
This object was stumbled upon on October 14, with the drop in the reservoir’s water level after the summer exposing it.
Also inside the bag were concrete blocks that had allegedly been used to weigh it down to the bottom of the reservoir with the aim of making the body disappear and removing all evidence of the crime.
The tattoos found on the body, alongside DNA results and items of clothing, allowed for the corpse to be identified as the young Albanian man who had disappeared after the Marbella dinner. An autopsy then confirmed that the cause of his death was violent.
After tracing the vehicle that the missing man had gotten into at the meeting point, officers found that it had been rented from a Barcelona agency by a woman.
This 58-year-old was an accessory in the crime with the two perpetrators of the murder being two Albanian men, aged 36 and 45, who travelled from Barcelona to Malaga to carry out the crime.
The trio were arrested in February, not only for their alleged involvement in homicide but also for membership in a criminal organisation. They are now in pretrial detention by order of judicial authorities.
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It is understood that they were motivated to commit the crime by a settling of scores related to international drug trafficking.
This criminal network allegedly threatened the deceased’s family throughout the investigation.
Officials went on to carry out two search and seizure operations at separate residences in Vallirana where they confiscated documents in the name of the woman arrested, mobile phones, and replica weapons.
A third search was also carried out at a property in Villafranca del Penedes.
The entire investigation was performed by the Grupo de Crimen Organizado from Marbella’s police station, UDYCO Costa del Col and the Grupo 23 of the UDET in Barcelona.
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