Scandi hitman faces life sentence for gunning down brother of reality TV star

A Scandi hitman who gunned down a reality star’s brother in front of his family is facing a life sentence.

Flamur ‘Alex’ Beqiri, 36, whose sister Misse Beqiri appeared in Real Housewives Of Cheshire, was murdered because of his connection to Scandi crime gangs.

Former kickboxer Anis Fouad Hemissi, 24, wore a latex mask to posed as a litter picker as he scoped Mr Beqiri’s house in Battersea before the killing.

The victim had been out for a meal wife Debora Krasniqi and two-year-old son when he was shot on Christmas Eve 2019, Southwark crown court heard.

Jurors saw CCTV footage of Mr Begiri being hit with eight bullets as his screaming wife cradled their son.

Hemissi was sent from Sweden to assassinate the father-of-two as part of a feud between two crime networks in the Scandinavian country.

He was convicted of murdering Mr Beqiri and possession of a firearm while fellow Swede Estevan Pino-Munizaga, 35, was cleared of murder but convicted of manslaughter.

Bawer Karaer, 23,  and Tobias Andersson, 32, were both acquitted of murder.

Claude Isaac-Castor, 22, and Clifford Rollox, 31, were found guilty of perverting the course of justice by ‘clearing up and removing the tools of the killer’s trade’ after the murder.

Hemissi denied he was the gunman and told jurors he flew to London to ‘Netflix and chill’ with a woman he met online, who he only knew as Nadine.

He denied that he was the person filmed on CCTV staking out Mr Beqiri’s house at 15 Battersea Church Road.

Prosecutor Mark Heywood told jurors the killing was ‘as brutal as it was thoroughly shocking.

‘The evidence will show you that it was done at very close range, the gun being fired multiple times until the target was not just put down but clearly on and beyond any hope of life.’

Karaer’s cousin, crime boss Ahmet Karaer, organised the murder over a six month period from Sweden and remains a large, the court heard.

After the shooting, Mrs Krasniqi was heard on the phone warning her husband’s friend Naief Adawi: ‘Maybe someone’s coming for you as well. Watch out’.

Mr Beqiri and Mr Adawi, who previously survived an attempted hit, were targeted because of their connections to the Petrovski crime gang.

Shortly before he was killed Mr Beqiri was so nervous he made his wife take a photograph of a restaurant before dining there.

Giving evidence from behind a screen, Mrs Krasniqi insisted that her husband was ‘a successful businessman’ who didn’t have any enemies.

The killers planned the hit from a riverside Airbnb apartment in Oyster Wharf ‘a stone’s throw’ from Mr Beqiri’s home.

They flew to London in November and returned the next month after Isaac-Castor secured the accommodation and assessed the situation on the ground.

Disguised as street cleaner and wearing a latex mask, Hemissi spent hours scoping out Mr Beqiri’s address two days before the murder before being confronted by a dog walker.

Hemissi, a Swedish-Tunisian dual national, claimed he chatted with 22-year-old Nadine everyday, but was unable to provide police proof of that as he forgot his phone’s password.

‘It is the same as I was talking with other girls.

‘At the time I was talking with 20 other girls, my phone will show that,’ said Hemissi.

Hemissi told the court that the footage showing him meeting Andersson and walking into an Oyster Wharf flat was in fact him meeting the person he believed to be Nadine’s cousin.

The Swede used to be a professional Thai Boxer but had to quit after getting a concussion from a fight in 2017.

‘I do not have balance, I lose balance and sometimes I forget something,’ he said.

Karaer said he came to London to take part in a burglary but insisted he had no idea what his gangster cousin Ahmet was up to.

‘I do not deserve this, my mum and dad do not deserve this, I am not my cousin,’ said Karaer.

Rollox, a recovering drug addict and the only Brit in the dock, claimed he was only hired to move IKEA furniture from the apartment in Oyster Wharf.

The five Swedes and UK national Rollox appeared at the dock, while a Swedish interpreter assisting during the trial.

Hemissi, Pino-Munizaga, both of Malmo, Sweden, Karaer, of Stockholm, Sweden, and Andersson, of Trangsund, Sweden, all denied murder.

Hemissi along was convicted of possession of murder and possession of a prohibited firearm in relation to a self-loading pistol.

Pino-Munizaga was convicted of manslaughter.

Isaac-Castor and Rollox denied but were convicted of perverting the course of justice.

They were remanded in custody  to be sentenced on February 18.

Police say Hemissi was tracked down because of a ticket stub he left in his flat bin.

The feud between the Petrovski and Meqqi organised crime groups continues to this day, with gang members being currently being prosecuted for a shooting in Sweden.

DC James Stevenson said: ‘It is just a falling out between two criminal groups.’

Beqiri was shot nine times at close range in the space of two seconds by a suspect using a pistol.

Detectives trawled through hundreds of hours of CCTV and tracked the hitman all the way back to the luxury riverside apartment in Oyster Wharf, Battersea.

The killers had not covered their tracks properly and in a bin officers pieced together a ripped ticket stub bearing the name Mr Fouad.

It was the crucial break through which led them to Anis Fouad Hemissi.

During a visit to Sweden to coordinate with local police, Met detectives offices bought items from home improvement shops and found the prices exactly matched Swedish financial records for the defendants, showing they had planned the hit months in advance.

Police were confused that Hemissi chose a litter picker disguise and a low-bar ‘women’s bike’ when he came to the UK, as this would have made him stand out in London.

But they discovered both litter pickers and low-bar bicycles are common in Sweden, and that latex mask disguises are often used by the Petrovski gang.

The pistol used in the shooting has never been recovered.

Police discovered this was a ‘tit for tat’ killing between two organised crime groups and just one case in a string of shootings which continues to this day.

Police declined to provide more information on Ahmet Karaer, the suspected mastermind.

DC Brett Hagen said: ‘One of the things the defendants underestimated was quite how much CCTV there is in London.

‘They would have never thought we would have been able to track them back to the flat in the first place.’

ANIS FOUAD HEMISSI – 13/07/97

The 24-year-old from Malmo is a dual Swedish and Tunisian national who frequently traveled to the North African country for work.

He was a kickboxer for ten years, but quit after suffering a head injury during a fight in 2017.

During the trial he claimed the injury left him with a concussion which left him with permanent balance and memory issues, but was unable to provide medical proof.

Hemissi claimed that neither the person caught on camera scoping out the victim’s address or the gunman fleeing the scene were him, saying he’d never heard of Mr Beqiri.

He claimed he had only come to London to meet a 22-year-old woman called Nadine who he had met through Facebook.

Initially, he said he’d invited Nadine to join him at Tunisia where he was for work but she told him her strict Arab family would not allow her to travel abroad.

Instead, she invited him to London and offered to put him up on the Oyster Wharf address of a friend who would be abroad at the time.

‘We were going to have “Netflix and chill”, we were going to relaxing with the movies or something,’ said Hemissi.

But after Nadine gave him various excuses, he claimed he spent his time in London mostly watching films.

Prosecutor Mark Heywood described Hemissi’s evidence regarding his presence in London as ‘completely untenable’ and said he was unable to give any biographical details about Nadine.

‘If such a person exists she must be, on his case, relatively easily discoverable,’ said Mr Heywood.

ESTEVAN-ALEXIS PINO-MUNIZAGA- 28/10/86

The 35-year-old from Vaxjo, in the south of Sweden, did not give evidence during the trial.

In November 2019, Pino-Munizaga travelled to London to carry out reconnaissance and secure accommodation.

Muziga, who was in London for just 14 hours, made a withdrawal on November 14 from an ATM, near Mr Beqiri’s home in Battersea Church Road.

Using a bicycle identical to the one later used by Hemissi to escape the scene his alleged role was to assess the location and travel time, from the victim’s house to Oyster Wharf.

He flew to London again on December 18, to secure the accommodation and hand over the keys to the apartment to Andersson.

CLIFFORD ROLLOX- 11/07/90

The only Briton in the operation, 31-year-old Rollox assisted his associate Castor in cleaning up the Oyster Wharf flat.

He claimed that Castor, who he knew from selling weed to, told him that this was a removal job.

Rollox said he didn’t know what they were meant to be moving but believed it to be something like IKEA furniture.

CLAUDE ISAAC CASTOR – 22/04/90

Originally from the Caribbean Dutch colony Sint Maarten, the 31-year-old UK resident lives in Catford.

Alongside Rollox, he was caught on CCTV loading a distinctive suitcase belonging to Hemissi into the trunk of a cab.