UK Border Force officials let ‘Most Wanted’ Albanian killer BACK into the UK and banned crook runs a car wash and lives nearby
Violent thug Selami Cokaj rakes in £40,000 from his business after sneaking way back into Britain
AN Albanian murderer kicked out of Britain sneaked back in under the noses of the bungling Border Force to run a car wash firm.
Selami Cokaj, 43, once on Interpol’s Most Wanted list, was deported in 2009 and banned from returning.
But he now runs a successful car wash in Oadby, Leics, using his real name and lives with his family in a detached house nearby.
The killer is pictured welcoming yet another customer to his thriving car wash after sneaking back into Britain to set up home here again.
Officials kicked Cokaj out of the UK in 2009 after discovering he was a fugitive from a 20-year jail term in Albania.
But he somehow slipped past bungling Border Force officials and is now openly living here with his family under his real name — and runs two car valeting firms that are raking in £40,000 a year.
Tory MP Philip Davies said: “It’s quite extraordinary this man could ever have got back into the UK.
“It shows how weak our border controls are.
"It makes you wonder how many other foreign criminals have sneaked back in.”
A rule that says foreign nationals who serve more than four years’ jail are automatically banned from the UK should have made Cokaj’s return impossible.
A source said: “He should have been picked up by Border Force when he entered the country.
“The fact he wasn’t suggests maybe he arrived clandestinely or didn’t disclose the conviction.”
It is unclear when or how Cokaj arrived but he is doing nothing to hide his identity.
Companies House records list him as director of two car valeting firms — one a busy car wash in Oadby, Leics, where prices start at £15 a vehicle.
He lives with his family in a four-bedroom house nearby, rented for £1,500 a month.
Cokaj, once on Interpol’s Most Wanted list, first arrived here in 1999 using the alias Valton Gashi and posing as a refugee from the Kosovan conflict.
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In fact he was a violent Albanian criminal who had been jailed in 1994 for a knife murder.
He was sentenced to 15 years, later increased to 20 for a further armed robbery conviction.
But after three years he escaped.
Within months of coming to the UK he was living in Mansfield, Notts, had set up a car wash firm and met his future wife.
His past caught up with him in 2006 and after a three-year extradition process he was deported.
But under Albanian law too much time had elapsed since his original sentence and he was freed in 2012.
Figures show twice as many Albanian stowaways have been caught at our ports than any other nationality in the past eight years.
The Home Office said: “This Government puts the safety of our country first.
"That’s why we’ve taken action like introducing ‘deport first, appeal later’ to stop this kind of thing happening.”