The daughter of Admir Murataj has filed a lawsuit against the State Police for his murder following the airport heist on 9 April.
Filed this morning at the Tirana prosecution office through lawyer Arber Hoxhaj, his daughter claims that he was deliberately killed because the police were not acting in self-defense and that her father had not fired a shot.
In a statement given to the media, Hoxhaj said: “Police should have arrested him, not killed him. There have been six arrests for the robbery, yet no one has been arrested and detained for the murder of Admir Murataj.”
The robbery took place at Rinas airport just outside of Tirana. The robbers broke through the security fence and approached the plane via vehicle, whilst it was preparing for take off. Money was being transferred between the armoured cash transport vehicle and the plane, and the accused including the deceased, intervened, took up to EUR 10 million, and fled.
According to reports, they allegedly came across a police car casually patrolling the area while they were on the run. Murataj was shot in the ensuing firefight and his alleged accomplices fled, dumping his body as they drove away.
So far, the police have given no statement of events that day, leading to much speculation around what occurred between the security fence being broken, and the death of Murataj.
This is the third heist of this kind that has happened a few weeks before an election. The Albanian government were quick to place blame on the “Chinese company” that manage the airport, and they deployed the military to secure the airport.
Last week, both Prime Minister Edi Rama and Minister of the Interior Sander Lleshi tweeted that the “robbers” and “authors of the Rinas heist” had been arrested. Whilst a number of individuals were indeed apprehended by the police, declaring their guilt publicly before any trial had occurred is not in line with Albanian law.
In Albania, like in most other countries, an individual is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. To refer to them as “robbers” and “criminals” at this stage is not only premature, but also violates the legal principle of the presumption of innocence.
This presumption is an international human right under the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European convention of Human rights, the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
