SPECIAL REPORT Kastriot Bruka was killed last night at 10:30 p.m. in Tirana. He was Chief of Police at the Port of Durrës and Commissioner of Laç and Krujë. On pages 4–5

LATEST NEWS ASSASSINATION Head of the Anti-Smuggling Unit Executed Senior police officer Kastriot Bruka has been executed. The attack, which gave the 30-year-old chief police officer no chance of survival, was carried out last night at around 10:30 p.m. at the entrance to his apartment building on Embassy Street, a few dozen metres be- fore the “Pifi” restaurant. According to police sources, the perpetrators were four people who have not yet been identified by police. They waited for the moment when Bruka, after parking his car, headed toward the entrance of the building where he had just bought an apartment. According to eyewitnesses questioned by police, two people fired Kalashnikovs at Kastriot Bruka. The witnesses provided the main physical characteristics of the attackers and descriptions of the clothes they were wearing at the time. These witnesses also told criminal investigators from Police Station 2 that the attackers were not masked and, immediately after the murder, got into a vehicle whose make they were unable to identify. Police officers during a colleague’s funeral ceremony Photo: ARCHIVE On page 2 Police officers during a colleague’s funeral ceremony. Photo: ARCHIVE

Interpol catches him at Rinas Fadil Bytyçi, the Kosovar arrested yesterday at Rinas On page 3

Secret operation last night A spectacular operation by the elite core of the special forces “Renea” in the middle of the “ogre” village of Lazarat. Its culmination was the arrest of the super-boss of the now-famous gang, 40-year-old Sherif Kazma. An operation worthy even of the American DELTA forces, it was carried out in three and a half minutes last night at around 8:00 p.m. After criminal investigators gathered reliable information that Kazma—a man much sought by police for a series of murders, organizing attacks on the police, blockades and numerous robberies on the national highway—was in his village, a special “Renea” team arrived in the city of Gjirokastër in the utmost secrecy. Just minutes before eight o’clock last night, the ministry’s special forces surrounded the house where Lazarat’s “boss” was hiding, handcuffed him in record time and managed to take him out of the village, urgently sending him to Tirana. The high-profile arrest was confirmed last night to “Gazeta” by the highest-ranking officials of the Ministry of Public Order. This is the first time in the “history of Lazarat” that the police have dared to carry out an operation to arrest the organizers of the group’s many anti-state “head-raising” incidents in this village. p. h