Criminal Albanians: BRAZEN AS THE MAFIA, ETHNIC ALBANIAN THUGS SPECIALIZE IN MAYHEM

[D.D. Chukurov]

The new newsgroup soc.culture.albania is due for some facts. This
is the first post in series of articles on the criminal nature of Albanian
nationals, here in the US, and in Europe. In US, these same criminals, with
drug monies they made, seem to have made some powerfull friends. One of
them is the current Republican leader of US Senate, Bob Dole. A local
Albanian (NY City) radio show has at least on one occasion advertised
1,500.00 USD/per-plate fund-raisers for the same Senator. Perhaps Mr. Dole
doesn't know the source of these funds? It's time he found that out.
The first page Wall Street Journal's article below, dating back to
1985, is just a small proof that it is the ALBANIAN CRIMINAL NATURE and not
their role of being "Robin Hoods" -- using drug monies for purchase of
weapons to finance the 'liberation' of Albanian-populated areas of ex-
Yugoslavia (Serbia and Macedonia) -- that is the root of the problem. Mr.
Giuliani, the current Mayor of NY City, was at the time this article was
written a US Attorney. I just wonder if he makes it to the 'Albanian-Day-
Parades' in Bronx, NYC, that is, if such a beast exist! At this time
criminal Albanians had a price on US Attorney's head of 400,000 USD. Mr.
Dole should know this. Does he care?

-DDC

Balkan Connection:
BRAZEN AS THE MAFIA, ETHNIC ALBANIAN THUGS SPECIALIZE IN MAYHEM
*****
Active in the Heroin Trade, The Faction Is So Violent Prosecutors Need Guards
*****
Dujo Saljanin's Comeuppance
*****

[The Wall Street Journal, Monday, September 9, 1985, p1, p18]

By Anthony M. DeStefano

NEW YORK - The informant who visited the office of U.S. Attorney Rudolph
W. Glullani last December had a chilling story to tell:
A defendant in a drug racketeering case that Mr. Giuliani was prosecuting
was offering $400.000 to anyone who would kill a certain assistant U.S.
attorney and a federal drug enforcement agent.
For 45 minutes Mr. Giuliani and his chief assistant, William Tendy,
listened to and evaluated the tale. Five other informants later
corroborated it. The threatened lawmen-assistant prosecutor Alan M. Cohen
and narcotics agent Jack Delmore-were given 24-hour-a-day protection by
federal marshals.
For years police and court officials in Italy have had to deal with
Maffia attempts on their lives, some of which have succeeded. American
gangsters have rarely dared such crimes. But certain criminal groups in the
U.S. now seem less restrained. Mr. Giuliani says he has recently heard of
more threats against law-enforcement officers and judges around the country
than at any other time in his 15 years as a prosecutor. A number of his
colleagues share that perception. Mr. Giuliani says that he himself has heen
threatened.

The 'Balkan Connection'

The drug case that brought forth the threats Mr. Giuliani is concerned
about involved the disruption of the so-called "Balkan connectlon," heroin
trade conducted by among others a loosely orginised group of ethnic
Albanians, centered in New York. A federal probe into this drug traffic and
other posslble crimes, including the alleged plot to kill officials, is in
progress. The drug investigation and the criminal activities of small group
of Albanian-Americans have attracted little publicity.
Many Albanians came to the U.S. after World War II via Yugoslavia.
Others before the war, came directly from Albania. A small, mountainous
Balkan country, communist Albania is bordered on the west by the Adriatic
Sea and on its other boundries by Yugoslavia and Greece.
Conservative and industrious, many Albanian-Americans manage real estate
and run small businesses, living and working in decent obscurity. An
estimated 100,000 live in the New York City area. Other Albanian communities
are found in Michigan, Massachusetts and Illinois.
But the small minority of Albanians who take to crime have created new
and unique problems for some law-enforcement officers around the country.
Language and a code of silence have protected the Albanian-American crime
factions from outside penetration. "They are real secretive," says a
detective in Hamtramck, Mich., a Detroit suburb where many Albanians live.
He says police have tried but failed to infiltrate Albanian gangs here.

Various Crimes

Alabanian-Americans criminals, police say, are involved in everything
from gun-running to counterfeiting. In New York City, a police intelligence
analyst says, some ethnic Albanians living in the Bronx are involved in
extortion and robbery. Federal officials believe that Albanians run gambling
in certain New York ethnic clubs.
Violence within the Albanian community can be particularly brutal, whether
related to orginized crime or not. In Hamtramck, an Albanian, reportedly
enraged by the belief that his wife had contracted a veneral diseace, shot
three people at a clinic and then killed himself. In some attacks, women have
been slashed with knives: crowded restaurants and bars have been raked with
gunfire. "They're a wild bunch of people," says Capt. Glen McAlpine of the
Shelby Township, Mich., police. During an investigation of Albanian crime in
Shelby, a bomb exploded next to the police station. A police officer also was
threatened, Capt. McAlpine says.

But it is drug trafficking that has gained Albanian organized crime the
most notoriety. Some Albanians, according to federal Drug Enforcement Agency
officials, are key traders in the "Balkan connection," the Istanbul-to-
Belgrade heroin route. While less well known than the so-called Sicilian and
French connections, the Balkan route in some years may move 25% to 40 % of
the U.S. heroin supply, official say.

Ties to Turks

Once serving only as couriers, some ethnic Albanians and Yugoslavs now
are taking over more command of the traffic, says Andrew Fenrich, a DEA
spokesman in New York. Federal agents say that Balkan crime groups are well
suited for trafficking because of close historical and religious ties with
the Turks, some of whom are sources of heroin.
DEA agents say the heroin flows from Turkey through Bulgaria and Greece
into Yugoslavia. From there it can wind up in Rome, Brussels, The Haggue and
the U.S.. Once in America, the Balkan heroin is believed by officials to be
distributted by some ethnic Albanians and Turks. (Albania itself, long cut
off from the most of the world by its recently deceased leader Enver Hoxha,
isn't believed by the U.S. to be involved in the drug trade.)
On the surface, at least, Skender Fici seemed to be a law-abiding
businessman. He ran a Staten Island travel agency, Theresa Worldwide, which
made a specialty of booking trips to Yugoslavia, where many Albanlans live.
He became a speciailst in handling immigration paper work, and he sponsored
a local ethnic Albanian soccer team.
According to federal prosecutors and a sentencing memorandum they filed
in Manhattan's Federal District Cortt, Mr. Fici's travel agency made a
perfect vehicle for arranging quick trips for drug dealers and couriers
working the Balkan connection. One of Mr. Fici's first shipments arrived In
New York In February 1979, according to the prosecutors' memo. A kilogram of
heroin was distributed in New York partly through the efforts of Xhevedet
Lika, known as Joey Lika, who made his base on New York City's polyglot Lower
East Side. There, according to the sentencing memorandum, Mr. Lika sold the
drug to other dealers from a social club located in the midst of Judaica
shops and Chinese clothing stores.
By 198O, according to federal court testimony and the sentencing report,
Mr. Lika was importing heroin as well as distrtbuting it, traveling to
Turkey and Yugoslavia to arrange shipments. He also allegedly dealt in
cocaine with Xhevedet Mustafa, who disappeared in 1982. Mr. Mustafa had been
a supporter, of the late, deposed Albanian monarch King Zog, who died in
1961.
Mr. Mustafa skipped out before his own federal trial on drug charges could
take place in 1952. In September 1952, be reportedly led an unsuccesslul
invasion of Albania aimed at restoring the monarchy. Mr. Hoxha said the
invaders all were "liquidated," but Mr. Mustafa still is listed as a
fugitive in federal court records.
Mr. Lika, meanwhile, was expanding his heroin business In New York with
other associates, according to federal prosecutors. He had fallen out with
one of his old partners, Dujo Saljanin, who in 1991 had agreed to import
several kilos of heroin for Mr. Llka and others but short-weighted the
delivery by a kilo. To resolve the descrepancy, a January 1981 meeting was
held at a Park Avenue South restaurant Mr. Saljanin operated. Joey Lika and
two other men, Mehmet Bici and Vuksan Vulaj, were present. Mr. Bici later
testified in federal court that Mr. Vulaj pulled a gun and shot Mr.
Saljanin.
"Mr. Lika had a gun, and he shot him, too," Mr. Bici testified. "I was
there, too, and I shot him too. And then we just left, crossed the street,"
he testified.
Even with 13 bullet wounds, Mr. Saljanin lived a short while, long enough
to talk. Mr. Vulaj was later shotgunned to death.
Hampered by lack of cooperation in the Albanian community, as well as by
difficultles with the Albanlan language that made electronic surveillance
useless, police and federal agents worked about three years belore they broke
the case in 1984.
Federal officials estimate that the group had imported more than 110
pounds of heroin with a retall or "street" value of $125 million through the
Balkan connection before the ring was broken up. Federal agents believe the
drugs had been sold in New York, California, Texas and Illinois.
The trail that Mr. Delmore, the DEA agent, followed led to Mr. Bici, who
was then serving a sentence in a New York state prison for attempted
manslaughter of his wife. Questioned by Mr. Delmore, Mr. Bici at first
denied having any knowledge of drug dealing or the Saljanin murder but
ultimately decided to cooperate. He was indicted along wlth Joey Llka, Mr.
Llka's brother Luan, Mr. Fici and others on federal charges of drug dealing
and racketeering. Luan Lika was never arrested and remains a fugitive. Mr.
Bici pleaded guilty to transporting heroin and to racketeering. He was
sentenced to eight years and is serving time under guard in the "prisoner
witness" protection program.
The atmosphere at the trial, which began late last year, was highly
charged. Early in the proceeding, Mr, Cohen, the prosecutor, mentioned that
a witness claimed to have been threatened with death by Mr. Lika's father.
(Judge Vincent Broderick kept Lika family spectators seated near the back of
the courtroom.)
Another witness reported that a man outside the Manhattan courthouse had
threatened her. Gjon Barisha, a prospective witness, fled before the trial,
after claiming that he had been fired at. He evaded federal agents for months
before being arrested on a material witness warrant last month. Others who
were to be called as witnesses hid out or refused to testify, prosecutor
Cohen says, because they feared, as one of them put it, "a bullet in the
head." Prosecutors allege that some witnesses perjured themselves at the
trial.
Judge Broderick remarked during the trial that the case involved the most
reckless disregard for human life that he had ever seen. The message wasn't
lost on federal officials, who took the threats against them seriously.
Since World War II, there have been more than 800 revenge killings by
Albanians in Yugoslavia and several in New York, according to Dushan
Kosovich, a scholar who has studied Albanlan mores. Mr. Giuliani says of
the threat against Mr. Cohen: "This was the most serious threat I have seen
yet to an assistant U.S. attorney."
For three months from late 1984 into early 1985, Mr. Cohen and Mr.
Delmore and their wives shared their homes with federal marshals acting as
bodyguards. "You can't believe what it is like," says Mr. Cohen, who was
guarded in court-even when he went to the men's room.
A Jury this year convicted Joey Lika and Mr. Fici on charges of
racketeering conspiracy. Mr. Lika was also convicted of the more serious
charge of running a criminal enterprise. To emphasize to the defendants that
their opponent was the government, and not just Mr. Cohen, U S. Attorney
Giuliani himself appeared in court for the sentencing in March. Mr, Lika
denied in court as sentence was about to be rendered that he wanted anyone
killed, and his attorney protested the government's use of evidence from
unnamed informants about the alleged threats. Nevertheless, Mr. Lika was
sentenced to life in prison, Mr. Fici to 80 years. They are appealing their
convictions.
Mr. Giuliani refuses to discuss detalls, but he says he has learned
recently that there had been an effort to fulflll an assassination contract
against him and Messrs. Cohen and Delmore. "After you have been convicted,"
he says, "there is no rational reason to klll a prosecutor, except revenge."
While Mr. Giuliani says he now considers the threat against himself
"minor," DEA agent Delmore and his famlly have moved-away from New York.
Prosecutor Cohen is still investigating other drug dealers in New York but
he, too, has a new residence.
Federal officials aren't sure how much lasting damage they have done to
the Balkan connection. Mr. Cohen says the Lika case and others, prosecuted
by local authorities, have resulted in the conviction of more than 10
Albanian-American drug traffickers, and that has got to have some impact.
Mr. Fenrich, the DEA spokesman, says that the Lika case made it clear that
vendettas against law enforcers won's be tolerated.
As for Joey Llka, prison may be the safest place for him. Because he
testified about his part in the Saljanin killing, federal agents say he now
is "in the blood" - that is, the object of a vendetta - with relatives of
Mr. Saljanin.

===============================================================
-- I speak for no one and no one speaks for me --
D. D. Chukurov d...@nyquist.bellcore.com
===============================================================

[D.D. Chukurov]

The new newsgroup soc.culture.albania is due for some facts. -DDC

POLICE SAY ALBANIAN GANGS ARE MAKING BURGLARY AN ART
[The NY Times, Dec. 17, 1994, page 1.]
By MATTHEW PURDY
Reprinted without permission, for 'fair use' only.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

The burglars sometimes visit a store beforehand police investiga-
tors say posing as foreign tourists interested in videotaping a modern
supermarket for the folks back home. But thcy return when the
store is closed, pound through the roof with sledgehammers, disable
alarm systems and then break open the safe with hammers, crowbars,
torches and specialized saws.
These are the tactics the police say are being used by crews of bur-
glars based in the Bronx and made up of immigrants from Alba-
nia and the former Yugoslavia - that have attacked retail stores up
and down the East Coast for the last three years.
The crcws are suspected of committing as many as 300 burglaries of
supermarkets, jewelry stores, banks and other retail outlets in more than
a dozen states, investigators say. In a recent case in Pennsylvania when
the state police responded to a tripped burglar alarm in the middle
of the night at a bank outside Philladelphia, they chased down Paljo Goj-
caj, 40, who gave his home address as Pelham Parkway in the Bronx,
and charged him and another man with trying to break into automated
teller machines.
Most often, however, the burglars specialize in cash-rich supermar-
kets, usually shunned by thieves because they are rarely closed, and the
estimetes of their take are as high as $10 million. They have turned rou-
tine breaking-and-entering crimes into an art, investigators say organ-
izing burglaries with precision usually reserved for thefts of precious
paintings.
They also frustrate authorities. Lookouts armed with police scan-
ners and walkie-talkies outside the stores warn burglars inside when
the police are coming. Investigators say that some suspects gather at
"members only" social clubs along Arthur Avenue in the Bronx but that
attempts to infiltrate the gangs have becn hampered by language and by
a loyalty among the burglars that rivals the Mafia's code of silence.
Until recently, the crimes have been handled as individual local po-
lice matters. But in the lastl month, Federal law-enforcemcnt officials
began a nationwide effort to link the crimes as part of an organized cun-
spiracy that can be prosecuted under racketeering laws aimed at
more traditional organized crime groups. In addition, the burglars are
under investigation by New York City police detectives.
"These guys are very clever," said William A. Gavin, the director
of the F.BI.'s office in Now York. "They're well disciplined, they're
well organized. You have to respect them for their trade, and when you
have to put them in jail."
Stanley Cohen, a lawyer who represents many Albanians said that
the crimes were isolated acts by young, poor immigrants, and that in
some cases these men have been unfairly accused because of ethnic
bias.
Mr. Cohen, who said he had represented Albanians in "dozens of cases
in many states," said there was no such thing as Albanian crime fam-
ilies.
"The Feds, the F.B.I, the Justice Department concoct these hierarchi-
cal schemes." Mr.Cohen said. They did it with the Italians, with the drug
gangs."
But Federal and local law-enforcement officials say the pattern of the
crimes -- the burglars' methods of entering stores, cracking safes and
conducting surveillance -- and the repeated arrest of the same people,
points strongly to an organization. The investigators are also trying to
follow the flow of stolen money, which they suspect is being laun-
dered through real estate investments.
John Ceprini, a detective with the Nassau County Police Department,
who has tracked these crimes for three years, said: "It's the birth of
yet anlother organized crime group. This is not like the Gambino crime
family. It's more set up in terms of the Russian Mafia where there are
individual crew leaders and each operates independently."
Mr. Ceprini said he had compiled a list of 80 people arrested nationwide
in connection with burglaries fitting the pattern attributed to the crews.
Most of the people on the list gave the Bronx as their address and listed
their place of birth as Albania or areas of the former Yugoslavia.
In the last six months there have been similar incidents inn Brooklyn;
Farmingdale, L.I.; Larchmont, N.Y.; Monmouth County, N.J.; Long
Hill and Chester, N.J., in Morris County; Falls Church, Va.; Fort
Washington, Md., and Delaware County, Pa., according to law-en-
forcement officials.
In Long Hill, N.J., burglars broke into a Shop-Rite in Long Hill at 3:30
A.M. on July 3. They tied up five members of the night crew, hit one
with a crowbar, then broke open the safe stealing $69 000. Two men -- an
Albanian immigrant from the Bronx and a Yugoslavian immigrant from
Garfield N.J. -- were arrested in a nearby parking lot and charged with
robbery.
Law-enforcement officials said their investigation centers on a
small group of people among a community of Albanian immigrants in
the Bronx that is estimated at between 50,000 to 60,000 people. In addi-
tion to immigrants from Albania, the police said they believe that Croats
and Serbs may also be involved in some of the crimes.
The burglaries have become such a widespread problem that a nation-
al association of supermarket owners has established the Albanian
Safe Burglary Task Force.
"The size of the problem is terrific," said Chuck Miller, the vice presi-
dent of loss prevention for the Food Marketing Institute, which repre-
sents 1,450 supermarket owners nationwide. When we got into it we
found that there weren't just a few, but there wero hundreds of safe-
cracking incidents."
Until recently, the crimes flew below the radar of Federal officials. In
an age of rampant violent crimes and sophisticated drug trafficking, a
supermarket burglary commands little attention. And since the burgla-
ries occurred in so many disparate places the pattern was slow to
emerge.
Don K. Clark, the F.B.I.'s special agent in charge of the criminal divi-
sion in New York, said that using racketeering laws to prosecute the
burglars would allow law-enforcement authorities to bundle the
crimes into one conspiracy case and win longer sentences.
Law-enforcement officials said that many of the burglars are in the
country illegally and that even when they are caught they manage tn
avoid prosecution.
"By the time their fingerprints aand the true identity are determined
they're out on a low bail and going to their next job," said George H. An-
drew, assistant special agent in charge for violent crimes in the Fed-
eral Bureau of Investigation's New York office.
The police said the crimes follow an unmistakable pattern. The bur-
glars use ropes to lower themselves through the roofs. They rarely bran-
dish guns but they bring an array of tools to the scene, including, in some
cases, tanks of oxygen and acetylene to fuel their torches. They usually
leave their tools behind.
"If they find a location that they believe has $100,000 in it and it's in
a $15,000 safe, they'll spend the money to go buy the same kind of safe and
practice on it," said Thomas Leahy, the chief of the rackets bureau for
the Bronx District Altorney's office. "That's pretty sophisticated."
Law-enforcement officials said the burglars often cut the telephone
lines to a store or bank, setting off the alarm, and then hide outside
while the police arrive, waiting until they leave to actually break in. This
allows the burglars to gauge the length of the response time and it
also increases the chances the police will treat another alarm from the
store as a false alarm.
Tom Walsh, a New Jersey safe salesman, said the work of the bur-
glars had been eased because most food store chains have similar safes
in every store. He said once the burglars learn how to crack the safe,
it becomes routtne.
The police in Manhattan's diamond district and in the other bor-
oughs where large supermarkets are more common have been famil-
iar with these groups of burglars for years. But recently the burglars
have been turning up in places more far-flung.
On Sept. 12, 1993, the police in Bel Air, Md., arrested Vesel Gjeka, an
Albanian immigrant from the Bronx, as he jumped from the roof of a
Giant supermarket which the police said he was trying to break into
using a 50-pound sledgehammer.
Other suspects fled leaving behind sophisticated communications
equipment, safe-cracking tools and a car with New York license plates,
the police said. Mr Gjeka was convicted of burglary charges.
At 1:30 A.M. that day, the police in Fairfax, Va., stopped a Buick with
New York licenses plate. Inside, they found a sledgehammer, an axe, wire
cutters, gloves and walkie-talkies and arrested four Albanian immi-
grants from the Bronx for possession of burglary tools. The charges
were eventually dropped.
In March 1993, two Albanian immigrants from New York pleaded
guilty to the burglary of a supermarket in Rockfold, Ill.
More recently, police investigators said, the burglars have set their
sights on automatic teller machines.
In the Pennsylvania case, the police in Delaware County, arrested
Mr. Gojcaj, and Ilir Biba, 21, both of the Bronx on June 5.
Although prosecutorb say Mr. Biba gave a statement confessing to
the crime, Mr. Cohen, the Manhattan lawyer who represents Mr. Biba
said, "there's absolutely nothing tying my client into that crime."
"People travel," Mr. Cohen said. "People get arrested. That doesn't
make for a national cabal."