On January 3, 22-years-old Estref Halili hanged himself in the prison of Rrogozhina. He was sent to the hospital, but died fifteen minutes after arrival.
Estref Halili had been arrested on December 22, 2016, in Kolonja, after a joint and a knife had been found in his car. He was still waiting for his case to be heard in court when he hanged himself in prison bathroom.
Previously, Halili had been convicted with five years imprisonment for the same crime. The police had caught him and two other with three grams of cannabis. He was released in February 2016.
The father of Estref Halili, Ardian Halili, declared that the police should arrest the big traffickers and not youths smoking a joint. His mother said that “they took him from me alive, why don’t they bring him back alive? My son didn’t do anything wrong, I hardly raised him, we hardly could afford to buy flour.”
While the European media are writing every day about the drug trade from Albania, calling our country the “Colombia of Europe,” Minister of Interior Affairs Saimir Tahiri and the State Police pat themselves on the back for their fight against crime and drugs, as if they’re arresting traffickers every day.
But it seems that what they call “traffickers” are in fact poor youngsters such as Estref – caught with three grams of weed for personal use. So far, none of the big cannabis cultivators or traffickers have been caught, and the likes of Klement Balili, the so-called “Escobar of Balkans,” continue to enjoy their freedom.
