Artan Cuku

The prosecution services and the police, under pressure from the media and the general public, acted quickly. Their investigations found that the shooter was one Mikel Shalari, a 24-year-old resident of Tirana with a criminal past. Two months after the incident, police arrested Shalari, who confessed to prosecutors of how he had been offered a fee of €25 000 by Bledar Jambelli for the killing, €3 000 of which had been paid up front, with the balance to follow after the job had been completed.

Jambelli – aka Rikardo Muho – from Fier, Albania, was a prominent criminal who was well known to the Albanian police because of his involvement in illicit activities in Spain and other European countries. According to the police, Jambelli masterminded Cuku’s murder, and, following Shalari’s testimony, he was arrested by INTERPOL in Greece on 31 December 2018, and charged for Cuku’s assassination. The court found him guilty and he was imprisoned.

Cuku’s killing can most likely be linked to when he was director of Vlora city police department and was in charge of the investigation leading to Jambelli’s arrest in 2012 for a murder committed in 2006. A few months later, however, senior police officers took Cuku off the case and the courts released Jambelli due to lack of evidence. 

Ironically, when he was murdered, Cuku was no longer serving in the police – he had been replaced in June 2014 following a shift in Albanian politics. Former General Police Director Ahmet Prençi said: ‘Imagine a police officer who had been working on the front line of the fight against crime and suddenly is out of work and thrown onto the street. It was a shameful, absurd and unjustified departure.’ In all probability, assassinating Cuku was therefore designed to send out a threatening message to those who might have wanted to reopen investigations into Jambelli’s criminal activities in the future. According to Prençi, ‘opening an old file in Albania would have been very damaging to him’.

In a conversation with his wife, Cuku had once said, ‘I’m not afraid of death as long as I am in God’s law. I am more afraid to live as a coward than to die as a man.’ It seems that Artan Cuku’s words were prophetic; not long after expressing this sentiment, he was found dead.

On 2 April 2019, Artan Cuku was awarded the title of Martyr of the Nation by the Albanian government for having sacrificed his life because of his duty.