TIRANA (Reuters) - Albania's most wanted man fought off special police and eluded capture for years only to blow himself up while fishing with dynamite, police and newspapers say. "Here, hold my beer"
Dubbed the "Last Cowboy" in northern Albania because of his gunfights with the law, Riza Malaj, 34, failed to accurately gauge the length of the fuse as he tried to blow up trout.
Doctors at the Bajram Curri hospital said he had lost both hands, badly hurt his eyes and suffered serious wounds all over his body. His family rejected offers to have him flown to a Tirana hospital where he would have been arrested immediately. "We'd rather he dies here as a martyr to Darwin"
"No, Ma, call the ambulance! It hurts!"
"Shut up, martyr"
Malaj was taken to a hospital in nearby U.N.-governed Kosovo.
He was sentenced in absentia to five years in jail on charges of leading an attack on the Bajram Curri police station last year. Since 2000, warrants have been issued for Malaj's arrest on charges of wilful murder, armed robbery, armed assault and battery of the education directress of the town.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
