Swedish hitman is jailed for life for shooting Real Housewives of Cheshire star's brother

A Swedish hitman who murdered a reality television star’s brother in a tit-for-tat gang war has been handed a life sentence with a minimum term of 35 years.

Flamur Beqiri, 36, was shot dead on the doorstep of his £1.7 million home in Battersea, south-west London, in front of his screaming wife as she shielded their two-year-old son on Christmas Eve in 2019.

Mr Beqiri, the brother of The Real Housewives Of Cheshire star Misse Beqiri, was a kingpin in an international drugs gang and was targeted as part of a feud with a rival organised crime group.

Anis Hemissi, 24, a professional kickboxer, was hired as an assassin to fly into London to carry out the murder, which was meticulously planned for up to six months.

The shooter, kickboxer Anis Hemissi, 24, had carried out a four-hour reconnaissance mission two days before the hit disguised as a litter picker, donning a high-vis jacket and trousers, sunglasses and a full-face latex mask

Beqiri, pictured with his wife, Debora Krasniqi, posed as a Swedish record producer but in reality was a senior figure in an international drugs gang

He rode a distinctive ladies’ bike, wore a latex mask and disguised himself as a litter picker to carry out reconnaissance before shooting Mr Beqiri eight times from behind.

Hemissi was jailed for life with a minimum term of 35 years at Southwark Crown Court on Friday after he was found guilty of murder and possession of a firearm.

Accomplice Estevan Pino-Munizaga, 35, travelled to the capital for around 14 hours in November 2019 to rent the flat where Hemissi stayed in Oyster Wharf, visit Mr Beqiri’s house nearby and buy the ladies’ bicycle.

He was jailed for 15 years, of which he will serve two thirds, after being acquitted of murder but found guilty of manslaughter.

Flamur ‘Alex’ Beqiri, 36, a Swedish national of Albanian heritage whose sister Misse Beqiri (both pictured) appeared in Real Housewives Of Cheshire, was murdered outside his £1.7m home in Battersea, southwest London, on Christmas Eve 2019

Hemissi made several errors, including using a ‘ladies’ design bicycle’ with a basket on the front for reconnaissance. In Sweden this considered unisex but in Britain is mainly used by women – making him stand out

How police identified hitman through a plane ticket he left in a bin

The Swedish hitman hired to murder drugs gang kingpin Flamur Beqiri was identified after police found a ripped-up plane ticket with part of his name on it.

Anis Hemissi, 24, wore latex masks and donned disguises including a litter picker’s outfit for reconnaissance and to carry out the shooting on Christmas Eve 2019.

However, a rapid CCTV trawl over the following days allowed detectives to trace the shooter on foot, then by bicycle from Battersea Church Road down the Thames path to a flat in Oyster Wharf.

A local team, hired to clean up, had removed a large suitcase and a rucksack on Christmas Day but police were already inside when they returned two days later to finish the job.

Metropolitan Police Detective Sergeant Brett Skowron said: ‘The defendants have underestimated quite how much CCTV there is throughout London.

‘We think they would never have thought that we would actually have been able to track them as far back to that flat in the first place.

‘That’s because in Sweden they have much less CCTV due to the restrictions of what it can be used for.’

The flat was a treasure trove for forensics investigators, who recovered gunshot residue from the Ridgeback bike used by Hemissi in his getaway.

Officers also found the litter picker and black bin bags used as part of Hemissi’s disguise.

DNA and fingerprints from Hemissi as well as Estevan Pino-Munizaga, 35, the man who had rented the flat, were also found on items such as drinks containers, food and rubbish.

Crucially for the investigation, in one of the bins was a ripped up piece of ticket stub with part of Hemissi’s name on it.

Officers were able to track the killer to Heathrow, from where he flew to Copenhagen, Denmark, in the early hours of Christmas Day using his own name.

Bank records obtained by Swedish police showed the gunman had bought a high-vis jacket and trousers, boots and a black beanie hat he used along with a latex mask and litter picker to pose as a street cleaner.

A new analysis technique was used in what is believed to be a first in an investigation to show he was using far more mobile data while he was in the flat compared to when he was outside.

Senior Crown Prosecution Service prosecutor Louise Attrill said the shooting was ‘a professional organised killing but there were mistakes.’

One of the errors was made by Pino-Munizaga when he bought a distinctive dark green ‘ladies’ design bicycle’, with a basket on the front, to be used by the gunman in reconnaissance.

Clifford Rollox, 31, from Islington, north London, and Dutch national Claude Isaac Castor, 31, from Sint Maarten in the Caribbean, were each jailed for three years after being found guilty of perverting the course of justice, having been hired locally to clean up and remove evidence, including the gun, from the flat. They will serve half.

Beqiri – a major figure in Swedish organised crime – was the latest victim of a string of ‘tit for tat’ shootings as his gang battled for domination of the market for smuggling drugs into Sweden from Spain and the Netherlands.

Moments after the shooting his wife, Deborah, called her husband’s associate Naief Adawi, 37, who had also moved to Battersea from Sweden, to warn him: ‘Maybe someone’s coming for you as well. Watch out.’

Adawi, who was jailed for eight years in Denmark in 2010 for aggravated robbery with a lethal weapon over a £7 million heist on a security firm – one of the largest heists in the country’s history – had already survived one attempt on his life.

Gunmen opened fire as he left his Malmo apartment on August 26, 2019, carrying his newborn baby daughter, who was dropped but not injured as Adawi ran away.

But his partner Karolin Hakim, 31, was shot multiple times and killed.

Close friends Adawi and Beqiri were both kingpins in the Swedish drugs gang run by Daniel Petrovski, 38, who was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment last June for an aggravated drugs offence.

They were locked in a bloody war with a rival organised crime group headed by Amir Mekky, 24, who was also involved in large-scale trafficking of cocaine and cannabis and arrested in Dubai in June 2020.

Violence between the two gangs, including kidnap and murder, escalated from the middle of 2018 and by the following summer both Adawi and Beqiri had become targets.

But Mekky’s men were not Beqiri’s only enemies – police intelligence suggests he was regularly in dispute with, or in debt to, criminal associates, including Albanian gangs.

Beqiri had installed a top-of-the-range CCTV system in his £1.7 million Battersea townhouse and when dining out he would send his wife in first and sit facing the door.

On the night he was murdered she had sat at the table in a Sloane Square restaurant, taken a photo and sent it to him before he joined her.

Beqiri was right to be cautious.

However, the CCTV camera he hoped would protect his family instead captured, with shocking clarity and sound, the moment a masked assassin shot him dead from behind with a semi-automatic handgun, firing 10 times.

Seconds earlier Beqiri had arrived home from dinner hand-in-hand with Ms Krasniqi and their two-year-old son, while their three-month-old baby and the children’s three grandparents were inside.

In graphic footage, Ms Krasniqi can be heard screaming and is seen cradling the boy as her husband drops to the floor, having been hit by eight bullets.

The couple, who made a £950,000 down payment on their home and also rented a property in Dubai, had married a little over a year earlier in Cernobbio, by Lake Como, Italy, with pictures of the happy occasion published in Grace Ormonde Wedding Style magazine.