Albanian Crime Boss Fights Deportation Over Human Rights Concerns
Adriatik Hysenlika argues that deportation would breach his human rights and separate him from his young son
Adriatik Hysenlika, Belgium, UK, Wandsworth, Human Rights, People Smuggling
London: So, there’s this guy, Adriatik Hysenlika, who’s in a bit of a pickle. He’s an Albanian who’s been accused of running a people-smuggling ring. Now, he’s trying to fight his deportation from the UK because he really doesn’t fancy the idea of ending up in a Belgian jail.
He’s currently sitting in Wandsworth jail, facing extradition to serve a ten-year sentence. Hysenlika claims that being sent back would cut him off from his two-year-old son, who was born in the UK. His lawyers are saying that the overcrowded conditions in Belgian prisons would breach his human rights.
Hysenlika came to the UK back in 1998, saying he was being persecuted in Albania. He got a UK passport in 2007, but it turns out he’s been making quite a bit of cash—around £1 million—by smuggling people into the country. Apparently, each person paid up to £23,000 to be hidden in lorries.
He was arrested last August after the National Crime Agency got a tip-off from Belgian authorities, where he was sentenced in absentia for a bunch of immigration offenses. Court documents describe him as the “leader of a criminal organization” that was heavily involved in smuggling migrants from Albania and Greece through several countries into the UK.
Now, there’s talk of stripping him of his UK citizenship. It’s a wild situation, especially since statistics show that Albanians are the most arrested nationality per capita in the UK. For every 1,000 Albanians, about 210 get arrested, compared to just 12 out of every 1,000 Brits. In 2023 alone, nearly 4,000 foreign offenders were deported, with a significant chunk being Albanian.