Serial killer ‘Tony Montana’ gets 20 years

An Albanian serial killer nicknamed ‘Tony Montana’ was jailed for at least 20 years for hacking his flatmate to death with a cheese knife in a row about a stolen wedding ring.

Mane Driza, 41, is currently serving a 30 year sentence in an Italian prison for shooting two men to death in a bar in Catania, Sicily just months after killing ‘Stefan’ Bledar Mone in Wembley in June 1999.

Driza is yet to serve a 25 year term in Albania for gunning down father and son Elmaz and Lavdosh Kannani in their village of Bishan to settle a deadly blood feud in 1997.

He fled his homeland after killing the pair and arrived in the UK in 1997, claiming to be a 17-year-old named Sokol Drenova.

He was given leave to remain until December 2001 as an unaccompanied minor fleeing Kosovo.

Driza then married Brazilian cleaner Roselane Driza, who was dubbed ‘real chilli hot stuff’ by an immigration judge during their passionate affair.

Roselane Driza was to stand trial for blackmail after she found tapes of her boyfriend having an sex with another immigration judge and a third woman.

After their relationship ended Mane Driza, nicknamed Tony Montana after the gangster played by Al Pacino in ‘Scarface,’ moved in with ‘Stefan’ Bledar Mone in his Wembley bedsit.

Stonemason Driza told colleagues he was going to kill Mr Mone, 23, for stealing his wedding ring on 22 June 1999.

After returning from hospital with his pregnant partner, Zoe Blay, Mr Mone was bludgeoned over the head with a piece of wood and stabbed in the face, head and body repeatedly with the cheese knife.

It was not until the following day that Ms Blay found her boyfriend’s body inside his locked room.

‘The scene inside that house in Wembley was horrific,’ said prosecutor Tim Cray, QC.

‘In fact, he had been beaten so badly, that Zoe, his girlfriend, was really only able to confirm it was him at first glance because of a distinctive silver belt buckle he had on his trousers.’

A post mortem examination later found more than 120 separate wounds to his body consistent with the repeated use of a knife and heavy instrument such as a pick axe handle.

There were also multiple fractures to his skull and face while some of the stab wounds had pierced his brain as well as his heart.

The tip of a lock-knife was later found embedded in the back of his skull.

Within hours of the murder, Driza was on a flight to Milan from Stansted Airport.

Judge Sarah Munro QC told the ruthless killer: ‘The sentence I must hand down is one of life imprisonment with the minimum term of 20 years.

‘You will not be released until the parole board determines you are no longer a significant threat to the public.

‘If you are released at any time you will be on license for the rest of your life.

‘It is far from clear when you will in fact serve this sentence.

‘You will be in custody in Italy for 20 years and must serve another seven years.’

She explained to Driza that if he is then extradited to Albania, he will likely serve 25 years in prison there, before starting his prison term in the UK.

‘By the end of 1999, you had committed three murders,’ she continued.

‘At the age of 41, which you are now, you have murdered five males and attempted to kill a sixth.’

‘This is a very unusual and unique case,’ she said.

‘The murder of Mr Mone was a planned attack in response to him having stolen your wedding ring.

‘The attack was of the outmost ferocity, with the use of at least two blades articles and a heavy wooden pile to inflict extensive injury.

‘This was a brutal attack on a defenceless man in his own home.

‘He must have suffered very considerably before he died.

She told Driza he had ‘deprived his family of a young man, his girlfriend of her partner and his unborn son of his father.

‘His girlfriend describes the ongoing affects that persist all these years later on her and her son.

‘She will have to live with the continuing memory of finding the mutilated body of her partner and the father of her unborn child.’

Judge Munro accepted there was very minor provocation after Mr Mone stole the killer’s wedding ring.

Just under six months after killing Mr Mone and arriving in Italy, Driza was languishing in an Italian jail for blasting Maskaj Artant and Blusaj Albert to death at a bar in Catania, Sicily.

A third man only survived when his gun jammed and Driza was jailed for 20 years.

Details of Driza’s marriage to Roselane emerged during her blackmail trial at the Old Bailey in 2006.

Within months of arriving in the UK as Roselane Nonato on a tourist visa on February 6, 1998, she had met the Albanian at a London nightclub.

He told her he was Catholic like her, worked as a stonemason’s assistant, and had been granted refugee status after fleeing from war-torn Kosovo.

But after they married in April 1999 it emerged he was a Albanian Muslim hitman.

They separated two months later, when Roselane discovered he had lied to her about his background, but she kept his assumed surname Driza.

Roselane Driza was cleared by a jury of blackmailing her lover, judge Mohammed Ilyas Khan, but convicted of blackmailing a female judge and stealing Khan’s homemade sex videos.

The films featured both judges having sex.

Roselane, then 37, was jailed for two years and nine months in 2006 but the conviction was later quashed at the High Court but she was deported.

Judge Khan, 64, died just a day after he retired in 2009.

Mane Driza, of no fixed address, denied murder but was found guilty by the jury.

He was sentenced to life and a minimum term of 20 years, which will begin either in 2026 or after he has served 25 years in an Albanian prison.