A Swedish hitman has been convicted of the doorstep murder of a crime boss in London after his getaway on a brightly coloured women’s bicycle was tracked by security cameras to a safe house.
Anis Fouad Hemissi was captured on camera walking into the rented flat after the murder of prominent drug runner Flamur Beqiri, 36, in the latest of a string of tit-for-tat attacks between rival Swedish gangs.
Members of the gang who arrived at the flat three days later to clear away incriminating evidence fled when they discovered that the police had got their first.
Officers found a fragment of an airline ticket as well as DNA on the bike, which led them to Hemissi, who flew out from Heathrow Airport within hours of the killing.
Hemissi, 24, a professional kickboxer, was found guilty of murder and possession of a firearm at Southwark Crown Court on Friday after a two-month trial.
The murder had been months in the planning after members of a rival drug gang tracked Beqiri to London, where he had fled after receiving death threats.
Beqiri’s killing on December 24, 2019, in front of his wife and young child in Battersea, south-west London, was part of series of murders as gangs tussled for control over the drugs trade from North Africa to Scandinavia.
The man who is suspected to have ordered the hit, Swedish criminal Ahmet Karaer, is wanted by British police and is currently on the run, having disappeared after being deported from Egypt where he was arrested for drug smuggling.
The bloody feud — which is linked to a series of murders and attempted killings centred in the Swedish city of Malmo — has been connected to some of Europe’s most wanted men whose influence stretches from London to Dubai via Morocco.
Violence has been increasing since 2018 as a new generation of young drug dealers sought to fill the vacuum following the killing of an established crime boss in 2016.
At stake was the lucrative drugs trade to the Nordic countries via Spain and the Netherlands, British police said.
Beqiri’s gang was involved in a feud with a drug gang called Los Suecos — the Swedes — who operated on the Costa del Sol and were allegedly led by Amir Faten Mekky, who was arrested in a raid in Dubai in June 2020.
Mr Mekky, a Dane with roots in Morocco, was on Europe’s most wanted list and had links to the reputed Dutch drug lord Ridouan Al Taghi, who was arrested in Dubai in December 2019.
Mr Taghi was extradited to the Netherlands where he is on trial for murder and drug-trafficking charges.
Swedish police told the London trial that Beqiri had been suspected of international drug dealing since 2007 and had been arrested several times in Europe.
His close friend in London, Naief Adawi, 37, had been targeted by gunmen outside his Malmo apartment four months before the Christmas Eve murder.
Mr Adawi was attacked while carrying his newborn daughter, whom he dropped while running away. He and his child survived but his partner, Karolin Hakim, 31, was shot several times and killed.
He has since been charged, along with 15 others, in a plot to kill members of the rival Mekky network in what police believe is the latest attempted reprisal linked to the feud.
The trial in London heard how Hemissi travelled to London several days before the shooting after months of careful preparations by the gang that included renting a flat less than a kilometre from Beqiri’s home.
Security camera footage captured Hemissi wearing a latex face mask and pretending to sweep the streets while keeping careful watch on Beqiri's £1.7 million London home.
On the day of the shooting, Hemissi waited outside the house for two hours before opening fire on Beqiri, a Swedish-Albanian national, as the victim returned from a meal out with his wife and collecting their 2-year-old son from a birthday party.
The jury were shown about 200 clips of security footage that tracked Hemissi as he cycled down a path by the side of the River Thames to the rented flat. A few hours later, he took a taxi to Heathrow Airport.
A local clean-up team linked to the gang arrived following the killing and are believed to have taken away the gun in a suitcase on Christmas Day.
The local hires turned up outside the flat for a second time on December 27 but were forced to abandon their planned “deep clean” of the site after realising that police were inside.
The “clean-up crew” — Clifford Rollox, 31, from north London and Dutch citizen Claude Isaac Castor, 31 — were convicted on Friday of perverting the course of justice.
A Swede who was involved in the planning — Estevan Pino-Munizaga, 35 — was acquitted of murder but found guilty of manslaughter. Two other Swedes were acquitted. The four convicted men will be sentenced next week.
Detective Inspector Jamie Stevenson, who led the investigation, said: “This was a meticulously planned murder that originated from a dispute between organised criminal groups in Sweden.
“The fatal shooting, at point-blank range in front of the victim’s wife and young child, was a deeply shocking and distressing incident.”
