AN Albanian ‘escape wizard’ has finally been arrested in Catalunya after breaking out of four European prisons in flamboyant fashion.
The ‘highly dangerous’ fugitive, named in media reports as 42-year-old Toma Taulant, had gone into hiding in Tarragona.
Taulant had previously made headlines across Europe after escaping three prisons in Italy and one in Belgium by sawing through bars, climbing down knotted sheets, and even scaling a human pyramid to get over a prison wall.
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“It sounds like something out of a film, but sometimes reality is stranger than fiction,” Spain’s Policia Nacional said in a statement, describing the criminal as a ‘great escape master.’
Before his latest prison escape, Taulant had been serving a sentence due to end in 2048 for offences including violent robbery, drug dealing and theft, Italian media reported.
Spanish officers finally closed in on him in the Campclar neighbourhood last Sunday, where he immediately put up fierce resistance.
Police said the fugitive was accompanied by other Albanians, who allegedly tried to help Taulant evade arrest.
One accomplice attacked and injured two officers as they swooped on Taulant, while another tossed a Sig Sauer pistol into some nearby bushes in an attempt to hide it.
Taulant tried to flee into the nearby crowd amid the chaos, but officers were able to catch up with him shortly afterwards.
Back at the police station, Taulant gave officers a fake ID, which had previously been linked to an offence involving the possession of firearms and explosives in Gerona.
He also carried two fake €500 notes, which police say are now being inspected by the Bank of Spain.
A judge then ordered him to be jailed without bail at Mas Enric prison, in Tarragona, as he awaits extradition to Italy.
His most recent prison escape came in December last year, when he fled the Opera maximum-security prison in Milan by hacking through bars and using knotted sheets to clamber down the prison wall.
In 2013, he fled a Belgian prison by scaling a human pyramid before climbing over the wall.
He had also escaped from an Italian prison in Parma that same year, as well as the central Italian prison of Terni in 2009.
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