Gangster keen for ‘expat life’ in Belgium

18 September 2006

BRUSSELS — Gangster Vicktor Hoxha wants to return to Belgium officially, despite the fact he was deported after serving time in jail.

“I’d dearly love to one day return to Belgium: after 16 years in your country, I began to feel Belgian,” he told newspaper ‘Het Laatste Nieuws’.

“I dream of Belgium: I miss my family, the peace, the mentality and the people. And yet, I would never secretly travel to Belgium. I am not crazy: if I take one step in Antwerp, the police might shoot me down.”

“I will one day return, but by the official way, as a normal man, with the correct papers and to lead a normal life, such as I spend my life here in Kosovo,” Hoxha has since said.

Controversy erupted last week amid reports that Hoxha was seen in Antwerp during the summer months but was not arrested.

This is despite the fact that upon his early release from jail at the start of this year, the convicted gangster was deported and told to never return.

Hoxha was told that if he ever returned to Belgium, he would be arrested and forced to serve out the rest of his jail sentence.

Interior Minister Patrick Dewael and Justice Minister Laurette Onkelinx subsequently exchanged heated words over the gangster’s alleged return to Belgium and the fact the prosecution office did not have him arrested.

However, Hoxha’s lawyers denied that their client had been in Belgium.

Mixed up in women trading, pimping, blackmail, violence and weapon possession in Antwerp, Hoxha was sentenced in 1998 to 15 years jail. Released seven years later, he now works as a translator in Kosovo.

[Copyright Expatica News 2006]

Subject: Belgian news