Italian police catch one of Sweden's 'most wanted'

One of Sweden’s most wanted criminals was arrested in Sicily by Italian police for attempted murder and robbery of a bank in central Sweden.

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The man, 33-year-old Dritan Hoxha, was arrested in a dawn raid in Siciliy last Thursday and is suspected of a bank robbery in Kopparberg, near Örebro in central Sweden in January, 2007.

In the 2007 heist, Hoxha, who is an Albanian citizen, stormed a bank armed with a gun and took 250,000 kronor ($38,000). Several people who were involved in the robbery have already been caught and imprisoned for their role in the theft.

Hoxha has been on the Swedish National Bureau of Investigation’s (Rikskriminalpolisen) Ikaros List of Sweden's wanted fugitives since 2011.

“We’re getting through them one by one, sooner or later we'll get them all,” said Bertil Olofsson of the National Police Board (Rikspolisstyrelsen) to the Sydsvenskan newspaper.

Olofsson is the head of a specialist section of the police that deals with fugitives – both inside and outside of the county. Some thirty countries in the world have similar police forces.

“That we can have people who are dealing 100 percent with this can influence the result,” Olofsson told the paper.

Hoxha is now in a prison in Catina awaiting extradition to Sweden.

TT/The Local/og
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