Inside the Habilla gang: The brightness and fall of Saimir Tahir's cousins

The regimes of the Habillas gang carried out by Italian authorities give particles to the lives of traffickers, risks, trafficking reductions and the misuse of millions gained overnight, as well as their views on Albanian politics, including already famous comments on policy functioning as a criminal organisation. During four years of Italian investigations, the Albanian state results in existence and never caused any concern for traffickers.

On October 25, 2013, 10: 00 p.m., four Albanians were traveling in two cars to Italy very upset. They considered themselves financially ruined after the police had seized a huge drug shipment in Augusta, on the southwestern coast of Sicily, about 30 miles [50 km] of Katanias. They did not know that angry conversations inside two cars were being bugged by Italian police and that these were the very ones that prove their connection to Augusta's cargo.

According to the transcript of their conversations included in the Italian police file, they were partly happy that they had escaped arrest and in part upset that they had lost large quantities of goods and were effectively located “in the financial crisis”, that they had no money either to return to Albania and that the “now needed to borrow to organise another”.

The night before, an attempt by the Habilaj brothers from Vlora to send a huge quantity of cannabis with a tirele from Albania to the coast of Sicily had failed. Italian police say the shipment was seized by chance, following an announcement in 112 for the presence of a suspicious gomone on the shore. Carabinieri intervened and seized 65 sacks with a total weight of 1,650kg.

Italian police were spying on their cars to prove their presence at the landing point as well as their connection to the sequent drug burden.

The bugged “Talks confirm the presence of Moses Habilaj, Sabaud Chellaj and Maridian Sulajt at the site of the landing, their difficult escape from the site, as well as the standing injury of Sulajt on the escape”, is written in the Italian police file, which was originally published in Albania by opposition leader Lulzim Basha.

We don't have any money either to return [to Albania]” it's said to Sabaud Chellian Maridian Sullet, while both thank God who survived and discuss the damage they suffered. “I have only 100 euros while Moses has 200”, followed by Sulaj, who has the Dujo nickname.

Don't worry, we'll go another way, we'll borrow money,” says Dajo.

In the next car, another member of the organisation, Mariglen Alimukaj, who was in a Fiat Brava car with Moses Habillan, says he borrowed money because he was even without cigarettes. On October 26, 2013, with a Mercedes of Class Moses Habilla, Mariglen Alimukaj and Sabaud Celaj left by ferry from Brindisi to Vlora. According to Italian police, they were likely returning to Albania to report to a person referred to as “the great chief for the loss of the drug burden.

A few months later, Moses Habilla was disappointed by his loss. Speaking to another suspect named Eneo Sule on January 9, 2014, he says, "The “that night we were left badly, what I had removed I would tell the tomb”.

Mirera Traffic

The marijuana traffic is a lucrative, high - risk activity. Transporting over a thousand pounds could require half a million euros in investment, while if successful, drugs can be sold in Italy for 1500,600 euros per kilogram. A typical load of 1,000 or 1,500kg if it successfully arrives in Italy provides 1.5m to 2m euros in gross revenue and net profits that could reach 1m euros. However, each kilogram must be paid at least 200-300 euros by producers in Albania, while the scafi, police corruption, cars and luxury lives of traffickers eat a considerable share of the profits.

Moses Habilaj explained more or less to Sebastiano Greco in a conversation Italian police arrested on November 20, 2013. According to him, if you do a thousand pounds of work, 600 are his and 400 are friends and honors.

Such huge drug shipments involve a large number of people. Initially, there are growers, who need a lot of land, (to produce half a pound of cannabis it takes at least 2-4 square meters of land, while to produce a ton it takes two or two times). Then an army of people is needed to care for the pruning of the plant to keep it healthy and qualityy. If you don't take care of the plant, marijuana can come up with bad quality and its market price will drop dramatically.

It requires minimally three months for the plant to be ready for harvesting, and the work is not enough here, as it will have to dry in the shade before expected and ready for the road.

The considerable area of land, along with irrigation infrastructure and agricultural impacts, as well as the high number of workers needed for pruning and other productions, makes drug cultivation a task that can hardly be kept secret from the eyes of villagers, local officials, or police. For this reason, both cultivation and trafficking require the cooperation or silence of a large number of officials.

The year 2013 is believed to have been a year especially good for the prosperity of the Mariarian in Albania. That year's tense electoral campaign, as well as the mid-months leading from the loss of elections by a government to the creation of the new government, enables growers and traffickers greater freedom of action than usual. In the last months of 2013 and early 2014, according to wiretaps, the Habilaj brothers ' gang was able to organize the trafficking of several loads of considerable quantity.

Italian police hearings suggest that organising a traffic at such proportions requires financial resources that are not available even by an old organisation of trafficking like Habillas. In a conversation recorded in February 2014, Moses Habilaj and Sabaud Celaj discuss that they owe over 1.7m euros and owe over 600 thousand euros in debt to a large number of Albanians, who are supposed to be suppliers or sponsors of such large operations of hundreds of pounds of marijuana simultaneously.

Flowing the Habilla Business

Just a few months after they lost their property in Augusta, the fate of the criminal organization seems to have been overturned, from financially bankrupt to people who did not know what to do with money. The hearings show that Moses Habilaj and his associates were responsible for the distribution of drugs in Italy and the recovery of revenues from its sale while his brothers result in engagement by Albania.

Traffickers used several cars traveling through Italy, mostly in segments from Brindisi or Bari to the island of Sicilia, Catania. Italian police seem to have managed to place surveillance creams on each of these cars, which enabled them to hear all the suspect's conversations on the one hand, and on the other, to follow through the global positioning system their movements step by step, including the dwellings where they stayed and the areas where they sold their goods. Along the wiretaps, it becomes clear that Moses Habilaj and other gang leaders, although waiting for the dismissal of the goods from the gomones in Italy, did not handle shipping by themselves from Albania to Italy.

This does not mean that Italian police had permanent and thorough control of the gang. The vast majority of wiretapping has been carried out on Italian territory and are environmental wiretaps performed on group vehicles. Members of the organisation seem aware of the danger of wiretapping and constantly avoid telephone discussions, use unintelligible nicknames for each other, use phone numbers purchased under other people's names. Only environmental wiretapping, which followed over three years, enabled Italian police to verify the involvement of Moses Habilaj and others in the trafficking of these drugs, as well as the fact that the group's functioning as a criminal organisation, with a secure basis in Albania where drugs and funding were located for such costly operations and the network of wholesale buyers in the Catania area in Sicily.

In December 2013, Moses Habilaj and Sabaud Chelya were bugged in Catania, expressing happiness that a road they had taken had succeeded and that they could already allow themselves to spend. On December 16th, both after receiving a 20 thousand-euro fee from the sale of drugs began spending immediately to buy expensive clothes. Moses says he has bought two bracelets, one for Saimir's wife and one for her mother. Sabi asks how much they have cost. Moses says two thousand euros. Moisiu says he had seen a beautiful 6 thousand-euro roll. At this point he comes to the sad conclusion that no matter how much money they spend, their problems never end.

Moses Habilaj tells Enea on January 11, 2014, that a road to Italy costs 7 thousand or 8 thousand euros because five thousand is spent on clothing. If you don't buy clothes every time it's because you're not without clothes”, Enea tells Moses. “

During December and January 2014, drug money begins to flow. Habilaj and Chelley, when they talk to each other, they often confuse money with euros. It's a 100 to 500-pound order from powerful distributors in Catania.

On January 10th, Moses Habilaj and Eneo Sulaj comment on the clothes they have purchased at Hugo Boss. Moisiu complains that a pair of socks has cost him 320 euros. They talk about the payment of 100,000 or 200 thousand euros, as well as commenting on the repayment of debts the organisation has received in different persons in Albania in the order of hundreds of thousands of euros.

In September 2014, Albanian gangs and their Italian collaborators and buyers decide to use a shark named Fatima to transport an unknown amount of drugs from Albania. However, the use of the fishery, which had to take a considerable long journey from the coast of Sicily to the shores of Albania, did not go well. For many months, from September 2014 to the summer of 2015, the fisher set off several times and left the journey half because of bad time or defects. Only on May 6, 2015, the fishman managed to carry out his trip to the Albanian coast, where after entering Albania's territorial waters, he was hosted by a boat vehicle of the Habillas to show his way to the site of the meeting.

The long time of the transition from the decision to use the Fatima curtain to its journey to Albania seems to have enabled Italian police to put this vehicle under surveillance. When Fatima arrived in Albania, Moses Habilaj welcomed Italians Giuliano and Greco in Porto Palermo. Italians discover Habilaj had almost full control of Albania's territory and order forces. According to the bugged conversations, Moses Habilaj was not afraid of the police as a whole, but only some police element that could be found transferred to Vlora. Furthermore, Habilaj seems to control not only the police, but there are people undercover in the radar monitoring system. It is heard giving Italian instructions to get out of the Corfu Strait using Albanian territorial waters before crossing into the open sea in order to avoid staying in Greek territorial waters at any cost. According to the informant that Moses Habilaj says had on the radar system, the fishman was mistaken during his arrival, staying in Greek territorial waters, is alluding to the threat of Greek authorities' action. They had to leave no more than two miles from the coast and proceed along the Albanian coast north until they made their way to Karaburun before heading west to the Italian coast. As for Albanian authorities, they were nowhere on that day in May 2015.

The shark in question turns out to have been anchored on Albanian coasts in Porto Palermo, Italian police identify 40.063083, 19,7926733. Here's exactly the military Moldovan in Porto Palermo.

The curtain when it reached the coast of Italy was expected of two smaller boats that would have to transport drugs from sea to land before Fatima normally entered the counterfeit harbor as if returning from a regular fishing trip. The problem was that the return route deteriorated dramatically, and the fisher failed to contact small waiting boats. Unable to get their goods into the sea, they entered the harbor along with their cargo. The police, who were waiting at the port while monitoring the beach designated for landing and waiting cars, confiscated 880 kg of marijuana on the night of May 8, 2015. Police suspect some of the drugs were just dumped in the sea.

In January 2017, Italian police launched a new series of wiretapping after it was observed that Moses and others were working on new cargo from Albania. Police this time note that Habilaj had managed to move directly to Sicily with Albanian scans unknown quantities of marijuana, a difficult operation if we consider limited autonomy in the fuel of a typical boat. The hearings indicate that traffic scans spend about 60 liters [60 L] of fuel hours on a journey and that up to 600 quarts [600 L] may be needed to reach Sicily.

Numerous courier arrests and repeated drug seizures have convinced the gang, meanwhile, that wiretapping, especially those on the phone, are a permanent danger. They choose to keep the phone off with batteries removed during travel, and they change numbers and phones over and over again. They decide to use mobile phones only for communication, and a woman named Brunilda Alikaj turns out to have given advice on how to avoid telephone surveillance. Traffickers start relying more and more on rented cars, but police easily manage to deploy at least GPS signals to enable them to track their location.

The lake for this criminal organization was closed on October 12, 2017. Italian investigators addressed Katania's court to search for measures of arrest for 11 suspects -- seven Albanians and four Italians. Among the accused are two brothers Habilaj, Moses and Florian, 39 and 37, the two brothers Sulaj, Maridian and Armando, 29, and 33, as well as Sabadin Celaaj, 49 and Fatmir Minaj, 55.

Tahiri's Role

The Italian police document mentions former Interior Minister Saimir Tahiri both during the wiretapping and during comments on three occasions. On one occasion, (page 100), the two suspects, Moses Habilaj and Sabaud Chellaj, discuss with each other what is more than they do, Saimir Tahiri. Moisiu believes Saimir has made 5m euros within a month, while Celaj says these are insignificant money for him because it is not enough in an electoral campaign. At the time of developing this conversation, December 16, 2013, Tahiri had only three months in the post of interior minister, but he had been an MP since 2009.

In the next case, (f 93) Moses says he has bought two bracelets, one for Saimir's wife and one for her mother. Sabi asks how much they have cost. Moses says two thousand euros.

In the Third Case, (f. 193-194) Italian police reported that on March 3, 2014, Moses Habilaj and Sabaud Chellaj had arrived in Sicily in the A8 car, owned by Saimir Tahiri. They returned to Albania on March 24th, but with Tahiri's car.

In the most problematic case for Tahir, he is mentioned as a potential beneficiary of a lot of money from drug trafficking. /Reporter.al/