Tonight investigates how record numbers of wanted foreign criminals are coming into Britain and the dangers they pose.
With the number of extradition requests having doubled in the past two years, our cameras follow Scotland Yard’s Extradition Unit as they track down the fugitives living in our midst. They include a Lithuanian man accused of raping a 13-year-old girl at knifepoint and a convicted murderer, also from Lithuania, who is discovered working on the M1 motorway.
A Tonight investigator secretly films a fugitive wanted for two armed carjackings in Belgium who disturbingly we discover is teaching children wrestling at a youth club, before he is eventually arrested by police.
The programme also investigates the adequacy of the checks at our borders which allow wanted criminals to get here in the first place, and questions Immigration Minister Phil Woolas on the issue.
76-year-old Dorothy Hodgson knows all about the danger of allowing wanted fugitives into the country. She was left with horrific facial injuries after disturbing two intruders at her home in Burnley. Both were known criminals from Eastern Europe, with one wanted for an offence at the time.
According to police in Albania there around 100 Albanian criminals currently living in Britain wanted for crimes ranging from murder to armed robbery. They include businessman Selami Cokaj – who came here 11 years ago after escaping from prison – where he was serving a 15-year sentence for stabbing a man to death. Controversially Cokaj, who insists on his innocence, is still in Britain, freed on bail, while the Home Office considers his asylum application.
Pellumb Seferi, the head of Interpol in Tirana, tells the programme: “I am very angry because I cannot accept the fact that Selami Cokaj is again free in the United Kingdom because he should be in prison in Albania.”
