The Tirana Court of Appeal has changed the first-instance verdict for Ilir Beqaraj, accused of the murder of Gentian Bejtja, sentencing him to 20 years in prison. Due to the benefit from the shortened trial, the final sentence Beqaraj will serve is 12 years and 8 months of imprisonment.
The murder of Gentian Bejtja in Fushë Krujë remains one of the most serious criminal incidents in the area in March 2024. The Appeal Court has reduced the sentence by more than 11 years compared to the previous decision, before the reduction for the shortened trial was applied. At the First Instance Court, he had been sentenced to 24 years in prison.
The Prosecution had requested 23 years in prison for Beqaraj, according to the prosecution authority during the trial of the case at first instance. The Appeal verdict constitutes a significant change in the sentence for one of the accused in this serious criminal incident that shook the Fushë-Krujë area in March 2024.
Beqaraj is accused of his role in the murder of former Prison Police employee Gentian Bejtja, who was executed in the courtyard of his home in the village of Larushk, in Fushë-Krujë. According to the Tirana Prosecution, Beqaraj was in a car near the place where Bejtja was killed, before and after the murder.
This fact, according to the prosecution, is also proven by the examination of the GPS in the vehicle he had rented. The Tirana Prosecution also says that Beqaraj’s role was to assist and remove the perpetrators from the scene. From the expert examination report and the DNA profiles, the GOLF-type car, in which traces of Ilir Beqaraj as well as Flodian Plaku were found, was used by the perpetrators to leave immediately after the vehicle used in the crime was burned.
For this incident, Flodian Plaku was arrested in August of this year, together with two other individuals with the surnames Serjani and Mamo, and investigations are ongoing. The murder of Gentian Bejtja is suspected to have been an act of revenge, as a result of clashes between gangs in Fushë-Krujë. The incident was recorded on the afternoon of 15 March 2024, when armed persons entered the courtyard of Bejtja’s residence and killed him with a Kalashnikov.
According to the expert findings, the 43-year-old Bejtja was shot with 3 Kalashnikovs. It is suspected that 3 people got out of the “Land Rover Discover” that stopped at his gate, entered the house and fired a volley of bullets at him. More than 30 bullets were fired at him.
A few minutes after the incident, on a secondary road in the village of Hasan, Fushë Krujë, police found a Land Rover vehicle in which the perpetrators had fled. Gentjan Bejtja was a name well known to the justice system and was suspected of a series of suspicious incidents in the Fushë-Krujë area. He had survived two previous assassination attempts.
Bejtja’s family had earlier been struck by another serious criminal incident, in which his brother-in-law was killed in an assassination attempt, while his minor son was wounded. Beqaraj was known as a friend of Enver Stafuka and was the last person to meet him before his disappearance. The Tirana Appeal verdict closes an important phase of the judicial process for Bejtja’s murder, while investigations into Flodian Plaku and other persons involved in the incident continue.