Albania Police Chief Quits Over Extradition Fiasco

Albania's police chief has resigned, saying in a letter to Prime Minister Edi Rama and Interior Minister Saimir Tahiri that he felt responsible for the Tirana Interpol office's failure to forward an extradition request from Belgium to the prosecutor's office.

"Procedural breaches by the Interpol specialist and the head of this sector have tarnished the image of the police," Artan Didi said.

"Considering this incident as unacceptable for the institution that I head?I decided to present my irrevocable resignation from my post," he added.

Tirana Interpol Chief Arben Bajraktari and an officer in the Interpol office, Loreta Alla, were arrested on Monday evening, charged with abuse of office for stonewalling the international arrest warrant against MP Mark Frroku.  

Belgian authorities issued the warrant for the Albanian MP on charges of premeditated murder.

Frroku, who is already under house arrest on different charges, has been convicted by a first-instance court in Brussels of the premeditated murder in 1999 of an Albanian citizen, Aleksander Kurti, in collaboration with three others.

The MP, who was known by the alias Besnik Morina in Belgium, was sentenced to ten years in prison but has appealed against the conviction and faces new hearings if extradited.

The Belgian authorities believe that Kurti's murder was the result of disputes over a prostitution racket, which it is thought Frroku's older brother ran.

Frroku is already under house arrest in Albania on charges of giving false testimony last Thursday. He is accused of concocting a fake murder plot together with another MP, Tom Doshi.

Doshi claimed earlier this month that the speaker of parliament, Ilir Meta, had hired a hitman to kill him and another MP,...